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YOUTH BETWEEN PLEASURE AND DUTY. 



Carton C&ition. 



THE HISTORY 

OF 

PENDENNIS 


HIS FORTUNES AND MISFORTUNES 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS GREATEST ENEMY 


BY 

WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY 

ii 


WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY THE AUTHOR 



NEW YORK 

CAXTON PUBLISHING CO. 

Tribune Building. 


























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TO DR. JOHN ELLIOTSON. 


My dear Doctor, 

Thirteen months ago, when it seemed likely 
that this story had come to a close, a kind friend brought 
you to my bedside, whence, in all probability, I never 
should have risen but for your constant watchfulness and 
skill. I like to recall your great goodness and kindness 
(as well as many acts of others, showing quite a surpris- 
ing friendship and sympathy) at that time, when kind- 
ness and friendship were most needed and welcome. 

And as you would take no other fee but thanks, let 
me record them here in behalf of me and mine, and 
subscribe myself, 

Yours most sincerely and gratefully, 

W. M. THACKERAY. 












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PREFACE. 


If this kind of composition, of which the two years* 
product is now laid before the public, fail in art, as it 
constantly does and must, it at least has the advantage 
of a certain truth and honesty, which a work more elab- 
orate might lose. In his constant communication with 
the reader, the writer is forced into frankness of expres- 
sion, and to speak out his own mind and feelings as they 
urge him. Many a slip of the pen and the printer, many 
a word spoken in haste, he sees and would recall as he 
looks over his volume. It is a sort of confidential talk 
between writer and reader, which must often be dull, 
must often flag. In the course of his volubility, the 
perpetual speaker must of necessity lay bare his own 
weaknesses, vanities, peculiarities. And as we judge of 
a man’s character, after long frequenting his society, not 
by one speech, or by one mood or opinion, or by one 
day’s talk, but by the tenor of his general bearing and con- 
versation ; so of a writer, who delivers himself up to you , 
perforce unreservedly, you say, Is he honest ? Does he 
tell the truth in the main ? Does he seem actuated by 
a desire to find out and speak it ? Is he a quack, who 
shams sentiment, or mouths for effect ? Does he seek 
popularity by claptraps or other arts ? I can no more 
ignore good fortune than any other chance which has 
befallen me. I have found many thousand more readers 


VI 


PREFACE. 


than I ever looked for. I have no right to say to these, 
You shall not find fault with my art, or fall asleep over 
my pages ; but I ask you to believe that this person 
writing strives to tell the truth. If there is not that, 
there is nothing. • 

Perhaps the lovers of “ excitement ” may care to 
know, that this book began with a very precise plan, 
which was entirely put aside. Ladies and gentlemen, 
you were to have been treated, and the writer’s and the 
publisher’s pocket benefited, by the recital of the most 
active horrors. What more exciting than a ruffian (with 
many admirable virtues) in St. Giles’s, visited constantly 
by a young lady from Belgravia ? What more stirring 
than the contrasts of society ? the mixture of slang and 
fashionable language ? the escapes, the battles, the mur- 
ders ? Nay, up to nine o’clock this very morning, my 
poor friend, Colonel Altamont, was doomed to execution, 
and the author only relented when his victim was 
actually at the window. 

The “ exciting ” plan was laid aside (with a very 
honorable forbearance on the part of the publishers), 
because, on attempting it, I found that I failed from want 
of experience of my subject ; and never having been in- 
timate with any convict in my life, and the manners of 
ruffians and jail-birds being quite unfamiliar to me, the 
idea of entering into competition with M. Eugene Sue, 
was abandoned. To describe a real rascal, you must 
make him so horrible that he would be too hideous to 
show ; and unless the painter paints him fairly, I hold 
he has no right to show him at all. 

Even the gentlemen of our age — this is an attempt 


PREFACE. 


vii 

to describe one of them, no better nor worse than most 
educated men — even these we cannot show as they are, 
with the notorious foibles and selfishness of their lives 
and their education. Since the author of Tom Jones 
was buried, no writer of fiction among us has been per- 
mitted to depict to his utmost power a Man. We must 
drape him, and give him a certain conventional simper. 
Society will not tolerate the Natural in our Art. Many 
ladies have remonstrated and subscribers left me, because 
in the course of the story, I described a young man re- 
sisting and affected by temptation. My object was to 
say, that he had the passions to feel, and the manliness 
and generosity to overcome them. You will not hear — 
it is best to know it — what moves in the real world, 
what passes in society, in the clubs, colleges, mess-rooms, 
— what is the life and talk of your sons. A little more 
frankness than is customary has been attempted in this 
story; with no bad desire on the writer’s part, it is 
hoped, and with no ill consequence to any reader. If 
truth is not always pleasant ; at any rate truth is best, 
from whatever chair — from those whence graver writers 
or thinkers argue, as from that at which the story-teller 
sits as he concludes his labor, and bids his kind reader 
farewell. 


Kensington, Nov. 26th 1850. 




















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CONTENTS, 


CHAP. PACK. 

I. Shows how first love may interrupt breakfast 7 

II. A pedigree and other family matters II 

III. In which Pendennis appears as a very young man 

indeed 27 

IV. Mrs. Haller 39 

V. Mrs. Haller at home 48 

VI. Contains both love and war 61 

VII. In which the Major makes his appearance 72 

VIII. In which Pen is kept waiting at the door, while the 

reader is informed who little Laura was 80 

IX. In which the Major opens the campaign 92 

X. Facing the enemy 99 

XI. Negotiation 105 

XII. In which a shooting match is proposed 114 

XIII. A crisis 122 

XIV. In which Miss Fotheringay makes a new engage- 

ment 130 

XV. The happy village 137 

XVI. Which concludes the first part of this history 148 

XVII. Alma Mater 165 

XVIII. Pendennis of Boniface 174 

XIX. Rake’s progress . . 187 

XX. Flight after defeat 195 

XXI. Prodigal’s return 203 

XXII. New Faces 212 

XXIII. A little innocent 229 

XXIV. Contains both love and jealousy 238 

XXV. A house full of visitors 247 

XXVI. Contains some ball-practising 261 

XXVII. Which is both quarrelsome and sentimental 270 

XXVIII. Babylon 284 

XXIX. The Knights of the Temple 296 

XXX. Old and new acquaintances 305 


X 


CONTENT'S. 


CHAP. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 

XXXV. 

XXXVI. 

XXXVII. 

XXXVIII. 

XXXIX. 

XL. 

XLI. 

XLII. 

XLIII. 

XLIV. 

XLV. 

XLVI. 

XLVII. 

XLVIII. 

XLIX. 

L. 

LI. 

LII. 

LIII. 

LIV. 

LV. 

LVI. 

LVII. 

LVIII. 

LIX. 

LX. 

LXI. 

LXII. 

LXIII. 

LXIV. 

LXV. 

LXVI. 

LXVII. 

LXVIII. 

LXVIX. 

LXX. 

LXXI. 

LXXII. 

LXXIII. 

LXXI V. 
LX XV. 


PAGE. 

In which the Printer’s Devil comes to the door. ... 317 
Which is passed in the neighborhood of Ludgate 

Hill, 329 

In which the history still hovers about Fleet Street. 340 

A dinner in the Row 346 

The Pall Mall Gazette/’ 356 

Where Pen appears in town and country 362 

In which the Sylph reappears 377 

In which Colonel Altamont appears and disappears 386 

Relates to Mr. Harry Foker’s affairs 395 

Carries the reader both to Richmond and Greenwich 407 

Contains a novel incident 416 

Alsatia 428 

In which the Colonel narrates some of his adventures 435 

A chapter ot conversations 447 

Miss Amory s partners 461 

Monseigneur S'Amuse 473 

A visit 0/' politeness 487 

In Shepherd’s Inn 493 

In or near the Temple Garden 499 

The happy village again . , 508 

Which had very nearly been the last of the story. . 515 

A critical chapter 527 

Convalescence 53 7 

Fanny’s occupation’s gone 549 

In which Fanny engages a new medical man 560 

Foreign ground. 572 

“ Fairoaks to Let.” 584 

Old Friends 594 

Explanations 607 

Conversations 615 

The way of the world 629 

Which accounts perhaps for chapter XXII 1 644 

Phillis and Corydon 657 

Temptation 663 

In which Pen begins his canvas 674 

In which Pen begins to doubt his election 683 

In which the Major is bidden to stand and deliver 696 
in which the Major neither yields his money nor 

his life 707 

In which Pendennis counts his eggs 715 

Fiat justitia 722 

In which the decks begin to clear 730 

Mr. and Mrs. Sam Huxter . 738 

Shows how Arthur had better have taken a return- 

ticket 74 3 

A chapter of match-making 755 

Exeunt omnes 763 


PENDENNIS. 


CHAPTER I. 

SHOWS HOW FIRST LOVE MAY INTERRUPT BREAKFAST. 

One fine morning in the full London season, Major Arthui 
Pendennis came over from his lodgings, according to his custom, 
to breakfast at a certain Club in Pall Mall, of which he was a 
chief ornament. At a quarter past ten the Major invariably 
made his appearance in the best blacked boots in all London, 
with a checked morning cravat hat never was rumpled until 
dinner-time, a buff waistcoat which bore the crown of his 
sovereign on the buttons, and linen so spotless that Mr. 
Brummel himself asked the name of his laundress, and would 
probably have employed her had not misfortunes compelled 
that great man to fly the country. Pendennis’s coat, his white 
gloves, his whiskers, his very cane, were perfect of their kind 
as specimens of the costume of a military man en retraite. At 
a distance, or seeing his back merely, you would have taken 
him to be not more than thirty years old : it was only by a 
nearer inspection that you saw the factitious nature of his rich 
brown hair, and that there were a few crow’s-feet round about 
the somewhat faded eyes of his handsome mottled face. His 
nose was of the Wellington pattern. His hands and wrist- 
bands were beautifully long and white. On the latter he wore 
handsome gold buttons given to him by his Royal Highness 
the Duke of York, and on the others more than one elegant 
ring, the chief and largest of them being emblazoned with the 
famous arms of Pendennis. 


8 


PENDENNIS. 


He always took possession of the same table in the same 
corner of the room, from which nobody ever now thought of 
ousting him. One or two mad wags and wild fellows had, in 
former days, endeavored to deprive him of this place ; but there 
was a quiet dignity in the Major’s manner as he took his seat 
at the next table, and surveyed the interlopers, which rendered 
it impossible for any man to sit and breakfast under his eye ; 
and that table — by the fire, and yet near the window — became 
his own. His letters were laid out there in expectation of his 
arrival, and many was the young fellow about town who looked 
with wonder at the number of those notes, and at the seals and 
franks which they bore. If there was any question about 
etiquette, society, who was married to whom, of what age such 
and such a duke was, Pendennis was the man to whom every 
one appealed. Marchionesses used to drive up to the Club, 
and leave notes for him, or fetch him out. He was perfectly 
affable. The young men liked to walk with him in the Park 
or down Pall Mall ; for he touched his hat to everybody, and 
every other man he met was a lord. 

The Major sate down at his accustomed table then, and 
while the waiters went to bring him his toast and his hot news- 
paper, he surveyed his letters through his gold double eye-glass, 
and examined one pretty note after another, and laid them by 
in order. There were large solemn dinner cards, suggestive of 
three courses and heavy conversation ; there were neat little 
confidential notes, conveying female entreaties ; there was a 
note on thick official paper from the Marquis of Steyne, telling 
him to come to Richmond to a little party at the Star and 
Garter; and another from the Bishop of Ealing and Mrs. 
Trail, requesting the honor of Major Pendennis’s company at 
Ealing House, all of which letters Pendennis read gracefully, 
and with the more satisfaction, because Glowry, the Scotch 
surgeon, breakfasting opposite to him, was looking on, and 
hating him for having so many invitations, which nobody ever 
sent to Glowry. 

These perused, the Major took out his pocket-book to see on 
what days he was disengaged, and which of these many hospit- 
able calls he could afford to accept or decline. 

He threw over Cutler, the East India Director, in Baker 
Street, in order to dine with Lord Steyne and the little French 
party at the Star and Garter — the Bishop he accepted, because, 
though the dinner was slow, he liked to dine with bishops — and 
so went through his list and disposed of them according to his 
fancy or interest. Then he took his breakfast and looked over 


PENDENNIS. 


9 


the paper, the gazette, the births and deaths, and the fashion- 
able intelligence, to see that his name was down among the 
guests at my Lord So-and-so’s fete, and in the intervals of these 
occupations carried on cheerful conversation with his acquaint- 
ances about the room. 

Among the letters which formed Major Pendennis’s budget 
for that morning there was only one unread, and which lay 
solitary and apart from all the fashionable London letters, with 
a country post-mark and a homely seal. The superscription was 
in a pretty delicate female hand, marked “ immediate ” by the 
fair writer ; yet the Major had, for reasons of his own, neglected 
up to the present moment his humble rural petitioner, who to 
be sure could hardly hope to get a hearing among so many 
grand folks who attended his levee. The fact was, this was a 
letter from a female relative of Pendennis, and while the gran- 
dees of her brother’s acquaintance were received and got their 
interview, and drove off, as it were, the patient country letter 
remained for a long time waiting for an audience in the ante- 
chamber, under the slop-basin. 

At last it came to be this letter’s turn, a^:l the Major broke 
a seal with “ Fairoaks ” engraved upon it, and “ Clavering St. 
Mary’s ” for a post-mark. It was a double letter, and the Major 
commenced perusing the envelope before he attacked the inner 
epistle. 

“ It is a letter from another Jook” growled Mr. Glowry, 
inwardly. “ Pendennis would not be leaving that to the last, 
I’m thinking. 

“ My dear Major Pendennis,” the letter ran, “ I beg and im- 
plore you to come to me immediately ” — very likely, thought 
Pendennis, and Steyne’s dinner to-day — “ I am in the greatest 
grief and perplexity. My dearest boy, who has been hitherto 
everything the fondest mother could wish, is grieving me dread- 
fully. He has formed — I can hardly write it — a passion, an 
infatuation,” — the Major grinned — “for an actress who has 
been performing here. She is at least twelve years older than 
Arthur — who will not be eighteen till next February — and the 
wretched boy insists upon marrying her.” 

“ Hay ! What’s making Pendennis swear now ? ” — Mr. 
Glowry asked of himself, for rage and wonder were concen- 
trated in the Major’s open mouth, as he read this astounding 
announcement. 

“ Do, my dear friend,” the grief-stricken lady went on, “ come 
to me instantly on the receipt of this ; and, as Arthur’s guardian, 
entreat, command, the wretched child to give up this most 


io 


PEND ENNIS 


deplorable resolution.” And after more entreaties to the above 
effect, the writer concluded by signing herself the Major’s un- 
happy affectionate sister, Helen Pendennis.” 

“ Fairoaks, Tuesday” — the Major concluded, reading the 
last words of the letter — “ A d — d pretty business at Fairoaks, 
Tuesday ; now let us see what the boy has to say ; ” and he took 
the other letter, which was written in a great floundering boy’s 
hand, and sealed with the large signet of the Pendennises, even 
larger than the Major’s own, and with supplementary wax sput- 
tered all round the seal, in token of the writer’s tremulousness 
and agitation. 

The epistle ran thus — 

“ Fairoaks , Monday , Midnight. 

“ My dear Uncle, 

“ In informing you of my engagement with Miss Costigan, daughter of J. Chester- 
field Costigan, Esq., of Costiganstown, but, perhaps, better known to you under her profes- 
sional name of Miss Fotheringay, of the Theatres Royal Drury Lane and Crow Street, and 
of the Norwich and Welsh Circuit, I am aware that I make an announcement which 
cannot, according to the present prejudices of society at least, be welcome to my family. 
My dearest mother, on whom, God knows, I would wish to inflict no needless pain, is deeply 
moved and grieved, I am sorry to say, by the intelligence which I have this night conveyed 
to her. I beseech you, my dear Sir, to come down and reason with ner and console her. 
Although obliged by poverty to earn an honorable maintenance by the exercise of her 
splendid talents, Miss Costigan’s family is as ancient and noble as our own. When our 
ancestor, Ralph Pendennis, landed with Richard II. in Ireland, my Emily’s forefathers 
were kings of that country. I have the information from Mr. Costigan, who, like yourself, 
is a military man. 

“ It is in vain I have attempted to argue with my dear mother, and prove to her that a 
young lady of irreproachable character and lineage, endowed with the most splendid gifts 
of beauty and genius, who devotes herself to the exercise of one of the noblest professions, 
for the sacred purpose of maintaining her family, is a being whom we should all love and 
reverence, rather than avoid ; — my poor mother has prejudices which it is impossible for my 
logic to overcome, and refuses to welcome to her arms one who is disposed to be her most 
affectionate daughter through life. 

“ Although Miss Costigan is some years older than myself, that circumstance does not 
operate as a barrier to my affection, and I am sure will not influence its duration. A love 
like mine, Sir, I feel, is contracted once and for ever. As I never dreamed of love until I 
saw her — I feel now that I shall die without ever knowing another passion. It is the fate 
of my life ; and having loved once, I should despise myself, and be unworthy of my name 
as a gentleman, if I hesitated to abide by my passion : if I did not give all where I felt all, 
and endow the woman who loves me fondly with my whole heart and my whole fortune. 

“ I press for a speedy marriage with my Emily — for why, in truth, should it be delayed? 
A delay implies a doubt, which I cast from me as unworthy. It is impossible that my 
sentiments can change towards Emily — that at any age she can be anything but the sole 
object of my love. Why, then, wait? I entreat you, my dear Uncle, to come down and 
reconcile my dear mother to our union, and I address you as a man of the world, qtii mores 
hominum multorum vidit et urbes , who will not feel any of the weak s cruples and fears 
which agitate a lady who has scarcely ever left her village. 

“ Pray, come down to us immediately. I am quite confident that — apart from considera- 
tions of fortune — you will admire and approve ji my Emily. 

“Your affectionate Nephew, 

“Arthur Pendennis, Jr.” 

When the Major had concluded the perusal of this letter, 
his countenance assumed an expression of such rage and horror 
that Glowry, the surgeon, felt in his pocket for his lancet, which he 
always carried in his card-case, and thought his respected friend 
was going into a fit. The intelligence was indeed sufficient to 
agitate Pendennis. The head of the Pendennises going to 


PENDENNIS. 


1 1 


marry an actress ten years his senior, — the head-strong boy 
about to plunge into matrimony. “ The mother has spoiled the 
young rascal,” groaned the Major inwardly, “ with her cursed 
sentimentality and romantic rubbish. My nephew marry a 
tragedy queen ! Gracious mercy, people will laugh at me so 
that I shall not dare to show my head ! ” And he thought with 
an irrepressible pang that he must give up Lord Steyne’s dinner 
at Richmond, and must lose his rest and pass the night in an 
abominable tight mail-coach, instead of taking pleasure, as he 
had promised himself, in some of the most agreeable and select 
society in England. 

He quitted his breakfast-table for the adjoining writing-room, 
and there ruefully wrote off refusals to the Marquis, the Earl, 
the Bishop, and all his entertainers ; and he ordered his servant 
to take places in the mail-coach for that evening, of course 
charging the sum which he disbursed for the seats to the ac- 
count of the widow and the young scapegrace of whom he was 
guardian. 


CHAPTER II. 

A PEDIGREE AND OTHER FAMILY MATTERS. 

Early in the Regency of George the Magnificent, there 
lived in a small town in the west of England, called Clavering, 
a gentleman whose name was Pendennis. There were those 
alive who remembered having seen his name painted on a 
board, which was surmounted by a gilt pestle and mortar over 
the door of a very humble little shop in the city of Bath, where 
Mr. Pendennis exercised the profession of apothecary and sur- 
geon ; and where he not only attended gentlemen in their sick- 
rooms, and ladies at the most interesting periods of their lives, 
but would condescend to sell a brown-paper plaster to a farmer’s 
wife across the counter, — or to vend toothbrushes, hair-powder, 
and London perfumery. 

And yet that little apothecary who sold a stray customer a 
pennyworth of salts, or a more fragrant cake of Windsor soap, 
was a gentleman of good education, and of as old a family as 
any in the whole county of Somerset. He had a Cornish pedi- 
gree which carried the Pendennises up to the time of the Druids, 
• — and who knows how much farther back ? They had inter- 


12 


PENDENNIS. 


married with the Normans at a very late period of their family 
existence, and they were related to all the great families of 
Wales and Brittany. Pendennis had had a piece of University 
education too, and might have pursued that career with honor, 
but in his second year at Oxbridge his father died insolvent, 
and poor Pen was obliged to betake himself to the pestle and 
apron. He always detested the trade, and it was only neces- 
sity, and the offer of his mother’s brother, a London apothecary 
of low family, into which Pendennis’s father had demeaned 
himself by marrying, that forced John Pendennis into so odious 
a calling. 

He quickly after his apprenticeship parted from the coarse- 
minded practitioner his relative, and set up for himself at Bath 
with his modest medical ensign. He had for some time a hard 
struggle with poverty ; and it was all he could do to keep the 
shop in decent repair, and his bedridden mother in comfort : 
but Lady Ribstone happening to be passing to the Rooms with 
an intoxicated Irish chairman who bumped her ladyship up 
against Fen’s very door-post, and drove his chair-pole through 
the handsomest pink-bottle in the surgeon’s window, alighted 
screaming from her vehicle, and was accommodated with a chair 
in Mr. Pendennis’s shop, where she was brought round with 
cinnamon and sal-volatile. 

Mr. Pendennis’s manners were so uncommonly gentleman- 
like and soothing, that her ladyship, the wife of Sir Pepin Rib- 
stone, of Codlingbury, in the county of Somerset, Bart., ap- 
pointed her preserver, as she called him, apothecary to her 
person and family, which was very large. Master Ribstone 
coming home for the Christmas holidays from Eton, over-ate 
himself and had a fever, in which Mr. Pendennis treated him 
with the greatest skill and tenderness. In a word, he got the 
good graces of the Codlingbury family, and from that day be- 
gan to prosper. The good company of Bath patronized him, 
and amongst the ladies especially he was beloved and admired. 
First his humble little shop became a smart one : then he dis- 
carded the selling of toothbrushes and perfumery: then he 
shut up the shop altogether, and only had a little surgery at- 
tended by a genteel young man : then he had a gig with a man 
to drive him ; and, before her exit from this world, his poor 
old mother had the happiness of seeing from her bedroom 
window, to which her chair was rolled, her beloved John 
step into a close carriage of his own, a one-horse carriage 
it is true, but with the arms of the family of Pendennis hand- 
somely emblazoned on the panels. “ What would Arthur say 


PEND ENNIS. 


r 3 

now > ” she asked, speaking of a younger son of hers — “ who 
never so much as once came to see my dearest Johnny through 
all the time of his poverty and struggles ! ” 

“ Captain Pendennis is with his regiment in India, mother,'” 
Mr. Pendennis remarked, “ and, if you please, I wish you 
would not call me Johnny before the young man — before Mr. 
Perkins.” 

Presently the day came when she ceased to call her son by 
any title of endearment or affection ; and his house was very 
. lonely without that kind though querulous voice. He had his 
night-bell altered and placed in the room in which the good 
old lady had grumbled for many a long year, and he slept in 
the great large bed there. He was upwards of forty years old 
when these events befell ; before the war was over ; before 
George the Magnifiqent came to the throne ; before this his- 
tory indeed : but what is a gentleman without a pedigree ? 
Pendennis, by this time, had his handsomely framed and glazed, 
and hanging up in his drawing-room between the pictures' of 
Codlingbury House in Somersetshire, and St. Boniface’s Col- 
lege, Oxbridge, where he had passed the brief and happy days 
of his early manhood. As for the pedigree he had taken it 
out of a trunk, as Sterne’s officer called for his sword, now 
that he was a gentleman and could show it. 

About the time of Mrs. Pendennis’s demise, another of her 
son’s patients likewise died at Bath ; that virtuous old woman, 
old Lady Pontypool, daughter of Reginald twelfth Earl of 
Bareacres, and by consequence great grand-aunt to the present 
Earl, and widow of John second Lord Pontypool, and likewise 
of the Reverend Jonas Wales, of the Armageddon Chapel, 
Clifton. For the last five years of her life her ladyship had 
been attended by Miss Helen Thistlewood, a very distant 
relative of the noble house of Bareacres, before mentioned, and 
daughter of Lieutenant R. Thistlewood, R. N., killed at the 
battle of Copenhagen. Under Lady Pontypool’s roof Miss 
Thistlewood found a shelter : the Doctor, who paid his visits 
to my Lady Pontypool at least twice a day, could not but re- 
mark the angelical sweetness and kindness with which the 
young lady bore her elderly relative’s ill-temper ; and it was as 
they were going in the fourth mourning coach. to attend her 
ladyship’s venerated remains to Bath Abbey, where they now 
repose, that he looked at her sweet pale face and resolved upon 
putting a certain question to her, the very nature of which made 
his pulse beat ninety, at least. 

He was older than she by more than twenty years, and at 


14 


PENDENNIS . 


no time the most ardent of men. Perhaps he had had a love 
affair in early life which he had to strangle — perhaps all early 
love affairs ought to be strangled or drowned, like so many 
blind kittens : well, at three-and-forty he was a collected quiet 
little gentleman in black stockings with a bald head, and a few 
days after the ceremony he called to see her, and, as he felt 
her pulse, he kept hold of her hand in his, and asked her where 
she was going to live now that the Pontypool family had come 
down upon the property, which was being nailed into boxes, 
and packed into hampers, and swaddled up with haybands, and 
buried in straw, and locked under three keys in green-baize 
plate-chests and carted away under the eyes of poor Miss 
Helen, — he asked her where she was going to live finally. 

Her eyes filled with tears, and she said she did not know. 
She had a little money. The old lady had left her a thousand 
pounds, indeed ; and she would go into a boarding-house or 
into a school ; in fine she did not know where. 

Then Pendennis, looking into her pale face, and keeping 
hold of her cold little hand, asked her if she would come and 
live with him ? He was old compared to — to so blooming a 
young lady as Miss Thistlewood (Pendennis was of the grave 
old complimentary school of gentlemen and apothecaries), but 
he was of good birth, and, he flattered himself, of good princi- 
ples and temper. His prospects were good, and daily mend- 
ing. He was alone in the world, and had need of a kind and 
constant companion, whom it would be the study of his life to 
make happy ; in a word, he recited to her a little speech, which 
he had composed that morning in bed, and rehearsed and per- 
fected in his carriage, as he was coming to wait upon the young 
lady. 

Perhaps if he had had an early love-passage, she too had 
one day hoped for a different lot than to be wedded to a little 
gentleman who rapped his teeth and smiled artificially, who was 
laboriously polite to the butler as he slid up stairs into the draw- 
ing-room, and profusely civil to the lady’s-maid, who waited at 
the bedroom door ; for whom her old patroness used to ring as 
for a servant, and who came with even more eagerness ; perhaps 
she would have chosen a different man — but she knew, on the 
other hand, how worthy Pendennis was, how prudent, how hon- 
orable ; how good he had been to his mother, and constant 
in his care of her ; and the upshot of this interview was, that 
she, blushing very much, made Pendennis an extremely low 
curtsey, and asked leave to — to consider his very kind pro 
posal. 


PENDENNIS. 


15 

They were married in the dull Bath season, which was the 
height of the season in London. And Pendennis having pre- 
viously, through a professional friend, M. R. C. S., secured 
lodgings in Holies Street, Cavendish Square, took his wifs 
thither in a chaise and pair ; conducted her to the theatres, 
the Parks, and the Chapel Royal : showed her the folks going 
to a drawing-room, and, in a word, gave her all the pleasures 
of the town. He likewise left cards upon Lord Pontypool, 
upon the Right Honorable the Earl of Bareacres, and upon 
Sir Pepin and Lady Ribstone, his earliest and kindest patrons. 
Bareacres took no notice of the cards. Pontypool called, ad- 
mired Mrs. Pendennis, and said Lady Pontypool would come 
and see her, which her ladyship did, per proxy of John her 
footman, who brought her card, and an invitation to a concert 
five weeks off. Pendennis was back in his little one-horse car- 
riage, dispensing draughts and pills at that time ; but the 
Ribstones asked him and Mrs. Pendennis to an entertainment, 
of which Pendennis talked to the last day of his life. 

The secret ambition of Mr. Pendennis had always been to 
be a gentleman. It takes much time and careful saving for a 
provincial doctor, whose gains are not very large, to lay by 
enough money wherewith to purchase a house and land : but 
besides our friend’s own frugality and prudence, fortune aided 
him considerably in his endeavor, and brought him to the point 
which he so panted to attain. He laid out some money very 
advantageously in the purchase of a house and small estate 
close upon the village of Clavering before mentioned. A lucky 
purchase which he had made of shares in a copper mine added 
very considerably to his wealth, and he realized with great 
prudence while this mine was still at its full vogue. Finally, he 
sold his business, at Bath, to Mr. Parkins, for a handsome sum 
of ready money, and for an annuity to be paid to him during a 
certain number of years after he had for ever retired from the 
handling of the mortar and pestle. 

Arthur Pendennis, his son, was eight years old at the time 
of this event, so that it is no wonder that the lad, who left Bath 
and the surgery so young, should forget the existence of such 
a place almost entirely, and that his father’s hands had ever 
been dirtied by the compounding of odious pills, or the prep- 
arations of filthy plasters. The old man never spoke about 
the shop himself, never alluded to it ; called in the medical 
practitioner of Clavering to attend his family ; sunk the black 
breeches and stockings altogether ; attended market and ses- 


r6 


PENDENNIS. 


sions, and wore a bottle-green coat and brass buttons with drab 
gaiters, just as if he had been an English gentleman all his life. 
He used to stand at his lodge-gate, and see the coaches come 
in, and bow gravely to the guards and coachmen as they touched 
their hats and drove by. It was he who founded the Clavering 
Book Club : and set up the Samaritan Soup and Blanket So- 
ciety. It was he who brought the mail, which used to run 
through Cacklefield before, away from that village and through 
Clavering. At church he was equally active as a vestryman 
and a worshipper. At market every Thursday, he went from 
pen to stall ; looked at samples of oats, and munched corn ; felt 
beasts, punched geese in the breast, and weighed them with a 
knowing air ; and did business with the farmers at the Clavering 
Arms, as well as the oldest frequenter of that house of call. It 
was now his shame, as it formerly was his pride, to be called 
doctor, and those who wished u> yie£se rum a!.7?*.vs gave him the 
title of Squire. 

Heaven knows where they came from, but a whole range of 
Pendennis portraits presently hung round the Doctor’s oak 
dining-room ; Lelys and Vandykes he vowed all the portraits 
to be, and when questioned as to the history of the originals, 
would vaguely say they were “ ancestors of his.” His little boy 
believed in them to their fullest extent, and Roger Pendennis 
of Agincourt, Arthur Pendennis of CreQy, General Pendennis 
of Blenheim and Oudenarde, were as real and actual beings for 
this young genleman as — whom shall we say? — as Robinson 
Crusoe, or Peter Wilkins, or the Seven Champions of Christ- 
endom, whose histories were in his library. 

Pendennis’s fortune, which was not above eight hundred 
pounds a year, did not, with the best economy and manage- 
ment, permit of his living with the great folks of the county ; 
but he had a decent comfortable society of the second sort. 
If they were not the roses, they lived near the roses, as it were, 
and had a good deal of the odor of genteel life. They had out 
their plate, and dined each other round in the moonlight nights 
twice a year, coming a dozen miles to these festivals ; and 
besides the country, the Pendennises had the society of the 
town of Clavering, as much as, nay, more than they liked : for 
Mrs. Pybus was always poking about Helen’s conservatories, 
and intercepting the operation of her soup-tickets and coal- 
clubs : Captain Glanders (H. P., 50th Dragoon Guards), was 
for ever swaggering about the Squire’s stables and gardens, and 
endeavoring to enlist him in his quarrels with the Vicar, with 
the Postmaster, with the Reverend F. Wapshot of Clavering 


PENDENNIS. 


17 

Grammar School, for overflogging his son, Anglesea Glanders, 
— with all the village in fine. And Pendennis and his wife 
often blessed themselves, that their house of Fairoaks was nearly 
a mile out of Clavering, or their premises would never have been 
free from the prying eyes and prattle of one or other of the 
male and female inhabitants there. 

Fairoaks lawn comes down to the little river Brawl, and on 
the other side were the plantations and woods (as much as 
were left of them) of Clavering Park, Sir Francis Clavering, 
Bart. The park was let out in pasture and fed down by sheep 
and cattle when the Pendennises came first to live at Fairoaks. 
Shutters were up in the house ; a splendid freestone palace, 
with great stairs, statues, and porticos, whereof you may see a 
picture in the “Beauties of England and Wales.” Sir Richard 
Clavering, Sir Francis’s grandfather, had commenced the ruin 
of the family by the building of this palace : his successor had 
achieved the ruin by living in it. The present Sir Francis was 
abroad somewhere ; nor could anybody be found rich enough 
to rent that enormous mansion, through the deserted rooms, 
mouldy clinking halls, and dismal galleries of which, Arthur 
Pendennis many a time walked trembling when he was a boy. 
At sunset, from the lawn of Fairoaks, there was a pretty sight : 
it and the opposite park of Clavering were in the habit of putting 
on a rich golden tinge, which became them both wonderfully. 
The upper windows of the great house flamed so as to make 
your eyes wink ; the little river ran off noisily westward, and 
was lost in a sombre wood, behind which the towers of the old 
abbey church of Clavering (whereby that town is called Claver- 
ing St. Mary’s to the present day) rose up in purple splendor. 
Little Arthur’s figure and his mother’s cast long blue shadows 
over the grass : and he would repeat in a low voice (for a scene 
of great natural beauty always moved the boy, who inherited 
this sensibility from his mother) certain lines beginning, 
“ These are thy glorious works, Parent of Good ; Almighty ! 
thine this universal frame,” greatly to Mrs. Pendennis’s delight. 
Such w r alks and conversation generally ended in a profusion of 
filial and maternal embraces ; for to love and to pray were the 
main occupations of this dear woman’s life ; and I have often 
heard Pendennis say in his wild way, that he felt that he was 
sure of going to heaven, for his mother never could be happy 
there without him. 

As for John Pendennis, as the father of the family, and that 
sort of thing, everybody had tire greatest respect for him : and 
his orders were obeyed like those of the Medes and Persians. 

2 


i8 


PENDENNIS. 


His hat was as well brushed, perhaps, as that of any man in 
this empire. His meals were served at the same minute every 
day, and woe to those who came late, as little Pen, a disorderly 
little rascal, sometimes did. Prayers were recited, his letters 
were read, his business despatched, his stables and garden in- 
spected, his hen-houses and kennel, his barn and pigstye visited, 
always at regular hours. After dinner he always had a nap 
with the Globe newspaper on his knee, and his yellow ban- 
danna handkerchief on his face (Major Pendennis sent the 
yellow handkerchiefs from India, and his brother had helped 
in the purchase of his majority, so that they were good friends 
now). And so, as his dinner took place at six o’clock to a 
minute, and the sunset business alluded to may be supposed to 
have occurred at about half-past seven, it is probable that he 
did not much care for the vie§v in front of his lawn windows, 
or take any share in the poetry and caresses which were taking 
place there. 

They seldom occurred in his presence. However frisky 
they were before, mother and child were hushed and quiet when 
Mr. Pendennis walked into the drawing-room, his newspaper 
under his arm. * * And here, while little Pen, buried in a great 
chair, read all the books of which he could lay hold, the Squire 
perused his own articles in the “ Gardener’s Gazette,” or took 
a solemn hand at picquet with Mrs. Pendennis, or an occasional 
friend from the village. 

Pendennis usually took care that at least one of his grand 
dinners should take place when his brother, the Major, who, on 
the return of his regiment from India and New South Wales, 
had sold out and gone upon half-pay, came to pay his biennial 
visit to Fairoaks. “ My brother, Major Pendennis,” was a 
constant theme of the retired Doctor’s conversation. All the 
family delighted in my brother the Major. He was the link 
which bound them to the great world of London, and the fash- 
ion. He always brought down the last news of the nobility, 
and spoke of such with soldier-like respect and decorum. He 
would say, “ My Lord Bareacres has been good enough to in- 
vite me to Bareacres for the pheasant shooting,” or, “ My Lord 
Steyne is so kind as to wish for my presence at Stillbrook for 
the Easter holidays ; ” and you may be sure the whereabouts 
of my brother the Major was carefully made known by worthy 
Mr. Pendennis to his friends at the Clavering Reading-room, at 
Justice-meetings, or at the County town. Their carriages would 
come from ten miles round to call upon Major Pendennis in his 




* 



CALM SUMMER EVENINGS, 















■ . 





■ H Ms e ffifc Ifl 







- 


















































*• 












» •- 


















































































































PENEENNIS. 


l 9 

visits to Fairoaks ; the fame of his fashion as a man about town 
was established throughout the county. There was a talk of 
his marrying Miss Hunkle, of Lilybank, old Hunkle the Attor- 
ney’s daughter, with at least fifteen hundred a year to her for- 
tune ; but my brother the Major declined. “ As a bachelor,” 
he said, “ nobody cares how poor I am. I have the happiness 
to live with people who are so highly placed in the world, that 
a few hundreds or thousands a year more or less can make 
no difference in the estimation in which they are pleased to 
hold me. Miss Hunkle, though a most respectable lady, is not 
in possession of either the birth or the manners which would 
entitle her to be received into the sphere in which I have the 
honor to move. I shall live and die an old bachelor, John : and 
your worthy friend, Miss Hunkle, I have no doubt will find 
some more worthy object of her affection, than a worn-out old 
soldier on half-pay.” Time showed the correctness of the sur- 
mise ; Miss Hunkle married a young French nobleman, and is 
now at this moment living at Lilybank, under the title of Baro- 
ness de Carambole, having been separated from her wild young 
scapegrace of a Baron very shortly after their union. 

The Major had a sincere liking and regard for his sister-in- 
law, whom he pronounced, and with perfect truth, to be as fine 
a lady as any in England. Indeed, Mrs. Pendennis’s tranquil 
beauty, her natural sweetness and kindness, and that simplicity 
and dignity which a perfect purity and innocence are sure to 
bestow upon a handsome woman, rendered her quite worthy of 
her brother’s praises. I think it is not national prejudice 
which makes me believe that a high-bred English lady is the 
most complete of all Heaven’s subjects in this world. In whom 
else do you see so much grace, and so much virtue ; so much 
faith, and so much tenderness ; with such a perfect refinement 
and chastity ? And by high-bred ladies I don’t mean duchesses 
and countesses. Be they ever so high in station, they can be 
but ladies, and no more. But almost every man who lives in 
the world has the happiness, let us hope, of counting a few 
such persons amongst his circle of acquaintance — women in 
whose angelical natures there is something awful, as well as 
beautiful, to contemplate ; at whose feet the wildest and fiercest 
of us must fall down and humble ourselves, in admiration of 
that adorable purity which never seems to do or to think wrong. 

Arthur Pendennis had the good fortune to have such a 
mother. During his childhood and youth, the boy thought of 
her as little less than an angel — a supernatural being, all wis- 
dom, love, and beauty. When her husband drove her into the 


20 


PENDENNIS. 


county town, to the assize balls or concerts, he would step into 
the assembly with his wife on his arm, and look the great folks 
in the face, as much as to say, “ Look at that, my lord ; can any 
of you show me a woman like that?” She enraged some 
country ladies with three times her money, by a sort of des- 
perate perfection which they found in her. Miss Pybus said 
she was cold and haughty ; Miss Pierce, that she was too proud 
for her station ; Mrs. Wapshot, as a doctor of divinity’s lady, 
would have the pas of her, who was only the wife of a medical 
practitioner. In the meanwhile, this lady moved through the 
world quite regardless of all the comments that were made in 
her praise or disfavor. She did not seem to know that she was 
admired or hated for being so perfect ; but carried on calmly 
through life, saying her prayers, loving her family, helping her 
neighbors, and doing her duty. 

That even a woman should be faultless, however, is an ar- 
rangement not permitted by nature, which assigns to us mental 
defects, as it awards to us headaches, illnesses, or death : with- 
out which the scheme of the world could not be carried on, — 
nay, some of the best qualities of mankind could not be brought 
into exercise. As pain produces or elicits fortitude and en- 
durance ; difficulty, perseverance ; poverty, industry and in- 
genuity ; danger, courage and what not ; so the very virtues, on 
the other hand, will generate some vices ; and, in fine, Mrs. 
Pendennis had that vice which Miss Pybus and Miss Pierce 
discovered in her, namely, that of pride ; which did not vest 
itself so much in her own person, as in that of her family. She 
spoke about Mr. Pendennis (a worthy little gentleman enough, 
but there are others as good as he) with an awful reverence, as 
if he had been the Pope of Rome on his throne, and she a car- 
dinal kneeling at his feet, and giving him incense. The Major 
she held to be a sort of Bayard among Majors : and as for her 
son Arthur she worshipped that youth with an ardor which the 
young scapegrace accepted almost as coolly as the statue of the 
Saint in Saint Peter’s receives the rapturous osculations which 
the faithful deliver on his toe. 

This unfortunate superstition and idol-worship of this good 
woman was the cause of a great deal of the misfortune which 
befell the young gentleman who is the hero of this history, and 
deserves therefore to be mentioned at the outset of his story. 

Arthur Pendennis’s schoolfellows at the Grey Friars School 
state that, as a boy, he was in no ways remarkable either as a 
dunce or as a scholar. He never read to improve himself out 
of school-hours, but, on the contrary, devoured all the novels, 


PENDENNIS. 


21 


plays, and poetry, on which he could lay his hands. He never 
was flogged, but it was a wonder how he escaped the whipping* 
post. When he had money he spent it royally in tarts for him- 
self and his friends ; he has been known to disburse nine and 
sixpence out of ten shillings awarded to him in a single day. 
When he had no funds he went on tick. When he could get 
no credit he went without, and was almost as happy. He has 
been known to take a thrashing for a crony without saying a 
word ; but a blow, ever so slight from a friend, would make him 
roar. To fighting he was averse from his earliest youth, as in- 
deed to physic, the Greek Grammar, or any other exertion, and 
would engage in none of them, except at the last extremity. 
He seldom if ever told lies, and never bullied little boys. 
Those masters or seniors who were kind to him, he loved with 
boyish ardor. And though the Doctor, when he did not know 
his Horace, or could not construe his Greek play, said that that 
boy Pendennis was a disgrace to the school, a candidate for 
ruin in this world, and perdition in the next ; a profligate who 
would most likely bring his venerable father to ruin and his 
mother to a dishonored grave, and the like — yet as the Doctor 
made use of these compliments to most of the boys in the place 
(which has not turned out an unusual number of felons and 
pick pockets), little Pen, at first uneasy and terrified by these 
charges, became gradually accustomed to hear them ; and he 
has not, in fact, either murdered his parents, or committed any 
act worthy of transportation or hanging up to the present day. 

There were many of the upper boys, among the Cistercians 
with whom Pendennis was educated, who assumed all the priv- 
ileges of men long before they quitted that seminary. Many 
of them, for example, smoked cigars — and some had already 
begun the practice of inebriation. One had fought a duel with 
an Ensign in a marching regiment in consequence of a row at 
the theatre — another actually kept a buggy and horse at a 
livery-stable in Covent Garden, and might be seen driving any 
Sunday in Hyde Park with a groom with squared arms and ar- 
morial buttons by his side. Many of the seniors were in love, and 
showed each other in confidence poems addressed to, or letters 
and locks of hair received from, young ladies — but Pen, a 
modest and timid youth, rather envied these than imitated 
them as yet. He had not got beyond the theory as yet — the 
practice of life was all to come. And by the way, ye tender 
mothers and sober fathers of Christian families, a prodigious 
thing that theory of life is as orally learned at a great public 
school. Why, if you could hear those boys of fourteen who 


22 


PEtfDEtfmS. 


blush before mothers and sneak off in silence *n the presence 
of their daughters, talking among each other — it would be the 
woman’s turn to blush then. Before he was twelve years old 
little Pen had heard talk enough to make him quite awfully 
wise upon certain points — and so, Madam, has your pretty 
little rosy-cheeked son, who is coming home from school for 
the ensuing holidays. I don’t say that the boy is lost, or that 
the innocence has left him which he had from “ Heaven, which 
is our home,” but that the shades of the prison-house are closing 
very fast over him, and that we are helping as much as possible 
to corrupt him. 

Well — Pen had just made his public appearance in a coat 
with a tail, or cauda-virilis, and was looking most anxiously in 
his little study-glass to see if his whiskers were growing, like 
those of more fortunate youths his companions ; and, instead 
of the treble voice with which he used to speak and sing (for 
his singing voice was a very sweet one, and he used when little 
to be made to perform “ Home, sweet Home,” “ My pretty 
Page,” and a French song or two which his mother had taught 
him, and other ballads for the delectation of the senior boys), 
had suddenly plunged into a deep bass diversified by a squeak, 
which set master and scholars laughing — he was about sixteen 
years old in a word, when he was suddenly called away from 
his academic studies. 

It was at the close of the forenoon school, and Pen had 
been unnoticed all the previous part of the morning till now, 
when the doctor put him on to construe in a Greek play. He 
did not know a word of it, though little Timmins, his form- 
fellow, was prompting him with all his might. Pen had made 
a sad blunder or two — when the awful chief broke out upon him. 

“ Pendennis, sir,” he said, “your idleness is incorrigible 
and your stupidity beyond example. You are a disgrace to 
your school, and to your family, and I have no doubt will prove 
so in after-life to your country. If that vice, sir, which is de- 
scribed to us as the root of all evil, be really what moralists 
have represented (and I have no doubt of the correctness of 
their opinion), for what a prodigious quantity of future crime 
and wickedness are you, unhappy boy, laying the seed ! Miser- 
able trifler ! A boy who construes d e and , , instead of d e but , 
at sixteen years of age, is guilty not merely of folly, and 
ignorance, and dulness inconceivable, but of crime, of deadly 
crime, of filial ingratitude, which I tremble to contemplate. A 
boy, sir, who does not learn his Greek play cheat the parents 
who spends money for his education. A boy who cheats his 


PE NDENNIS. 


23 


parent is not very far from robbing or forging upon his neigh- 
bor. A man who forges on his neighbor pays the penalty of 
his crime at the gallows. And it is not such a one that I pity 
(for he will be deservedly cut off) ; but his maddened and 
heart-broken parents, who are driven to a premature grave by 
his crimes, or, if they live, drag on a wretched and dishonored 
old age. Go on, sir, and I warn you that the very next mistake 
that you make shall subject you to the punishment of the rod. 
Who’s that laughing ? What ill-conditioned boy is there that 
dares to laugh ? ” shouted the Doctor. 

Indeed, while the master was making this oration, there was 
a general titter behind him in the school room. The orator 
had his back to the door of this ancient apartment, which was 
open, and a gentleman who was quite familiar with the place, 
for both Major Arthur and John Pendennis had been at the 
school, was asking the fifth-form boy who sat by the door for 
Pendennis. The lad grinning pointed to the culprit against 
whom the Doctor was pouring out the thunders of his just 
wrath — Major Pendennis could not help laughing. He re- 
membered having stood under the very pillar where Pen the 
younger now stood, and having been assaulted by the Doctor’s 
predecessor years and years ago. The intelligence was “ passed 
round ” that it was Pendennis’s uncle in an instant, and a hun- 
dred young faces wondering and giggling, between terror and 
laughter, turned now to thp new-comer and then to the awful 
Doctor. 

The Major asked the fifth-form boy to carry his card up to 
the Doctor, which the lad did with an arch look. Major Pen- 
dennis had written on the card, “ I must take A. P. home ; his 
father is very ill.” 

As the Doctor received the card, and stopped his harangue 
with rather a scared look, the laughter of the boys, half con- 
strained until then, burst out in a general shout. “ Silence ! ” 
roared out the Doctor stamping with his foot. Pen looked up 
and saw who was his deliverer ; the Major beckoned to him 
gravely, and tumbling down his books, Pen went across. 

The Doctor took out his watch. It was two minutes to 
one. “ We will take the Juvenal at afternoon school,” he said, 
nodding to the Captain, and all the boys understanding the 
signal gathered up their books and poured out of the hall. 

Young Pen saw by his uncle’s face that something had 
happened at home. “ Is there anything the matter with— my 
mother ? ” he said. He could hardly speak, though, for emotion, 
and the tears which were ready to start. 


24 


PENDENNIS. 


“ No,” said the Major, “but your father’s very ill. Go and 
pack your trunk directly ; I have got a post-chaise at the gate.” 

Pen went off quickly to his boarding-house to do as his 
uncle bade him ; and the Doctor, now left alone in the school- 
room, came out to shake hands with his old schoolfellow. You 
would not have thought it was the same man. As Cinderella 
at a particular hour became, from a blazing and magnificent 
princess, quite an ordinary little maid in a gray petticoat, so 
as the clock struck one, all the thundering majesty and awful 
wrath of the schoolmaster disappeared. 

“ There is nothing serious, I hope,” said the Doctor. “ It 
is a pity to take the boy otherwise. He is a good boy, rather 
idle and unenergetic, but an honest gentlemanlike little fellow 
though I can’t get him to construe as I wish. Won’t you come 
in and have some luncheon ? My wife will be very happy to 
see you.” 

But Major Pendennis declined the luncheon. He said his 
brother was very ill, and had a fit the day before, and it was a 
great question if they should see him alive. 

“ There’s no other son, is there ? ” said the Doctor. The 
Major answered “ No.” 

“ And there’s a good eh — a good eh — property I believe ? ” 
asked the other in an off-hand way. 

“ H’m — so so,” said the Major. Whereupon this colloquy 
came to an end. And Arthur Pendennis got into a post-chaise 
with his uncle, never to come back to school any more. 

As the chaise drove through Clavering, the ostler standing 
whistling under the archway of the Clavering Arms, winked the 
postilion ominously, as much as to say all was over. The 
gardener’s wife came and opened the lodge-gates, and let the 
travellers through - with a silent shake of the head. All the 
blinds were down at Fairoaks — the face of the old footman was 
as blank when he let them in. Arthur’s face was white too 
with terror more than with grief. Whatever of warmth and 
love the deceased man might have had, and he adored his wife 
and loved and admired his son with all his heart, he had shut 
them up within himself ; nor had the boy been ever able to 
penetrate that frigid outward barrier. But Arthur had been 
his father’s pride and glory through life, and his name the last 
which John Pendennis had tried to articulate whilst he lay 
with his wife’s hand clasping his own cold and clammy palm, 
as the flickering spirit went out into the darkness of death, and 
life and the world passed away from him. 

The little girl, whose face had peered for a moment under 


PENDENNIS. 


2 5 


the blinds as the chaise came up, opened the door from the 
stairs into the hall, and taking Arthur’s hand silently as he 
stooped down to kiss her, led him up stairs to his mother. Old 
John opened the dining-room for the Major. The room was 
darkened with the blinds down, and surrounded by all the 
gloomy pictures of the Pendennises. He drank a glass of wine. 
The bottle had been opened for the Squire four days before. 
His hat was brushed, and laid on the hall table : his news- 
papers, and his letter bag, with John Pendennis, Esquire, Fair- 
oaks, engraved upon the brass plate, were there in waiting. 
The doctor and the lawyer from Clavering, who had seen the 
chaise pass through, came up in a gig half an hour after the 
Major’s arrival, and entered by the back door. The former 
gave a detailed account of the seizure and demise of Mr. Pen- 
dennis, enlarged on his virtues and the estimation in which the 
neighborhood held him ; on what a loss he would be to the 
magistrates’ bench, the County Hospital, &c. Mrs. Pendennis 
bore up wonderfully, he said, especially since Master Arthur’s 
arrival. The lawyer stayed and dined with Major Pendennis, 
and they talked business all the evening. The Major was his 
brother’s executor, and joint guardian to the boy with Mrs. 
Pendennis. Everything was left unreservedly to her, except in 
case of a second marriage, — an occasion which might offer itself 
in the case of so young and handsome a woman, Mr. Tatham 
gallantly said, when different provisions were enacted by the 
deceased. The Major would of course take entire superinten- 
dence of everything under this most impressive and melancholy 
occasion. Aware of this authority, old John the footman, when 
he brought Major Pendennis the candle to go to bed, followed 
afterwards with the plate-basket ; and the next morning brought 
him the key of the hall clock — the Squire always used to wind 
it up of a Thursday, John said. Mrs. Pendennis’s maid brought 
him messages from her mistress. She confirmed the doctor’s 
report, of the comfort which Master Arthur’s arrival had caused 
to his mother. 

What passed between that lady and the boy is not of 
import. A veil should be thrown over those sacred emotions 
of love and grief. The maternal passion is a sacred mystery 
to me. What one sees symbolized in the Roman churches in 
the image of the Virgin Mother with a bosom bleeding with 
love, I think one may witness (and admire the Almighty bounty 
for) every day. I saw a Jewish lady, only yesterday, with a 
child at her knee, and from whose face towards the child there 
shone a sweetness so angelical, that it seemed to form a sort 


26 


PEND ENNIS. 


of glory round both. I protest I could have knelt before her 
too, and adored in her the Divine beneficence in endowing us 
with the maternal storge , which began with our race and sanc^ 
tifies the history of mankind. 

As for Arthur Pendennis, after that awful shock which thtf 
sight of his dead father must have produced on him, and the 
pity and feeling which such an event no doubt occasioned, I am 
not sure that in the very moment of the grief, and as he 
embraced his mother, and tenderly consoled her, and promised 
to love her for ever, there was not springing up in his breast a 
sort of secret triumph and exultation. He was the chief now 
and lord. He was Pendennis ; and all round about him were 
his servants and handmaids. “ You’ll never send me away,” 
little Laura said, tripping by him, and holding his hand. “ You 
won’t send me to school, will you, Arthur ? ” 

Arthur kissed her and patted her head. No, she shouldn’t 
go to school. As for going himself, that was quite out of the 
question. He had determined that that part of his life should 
not be renewed. In the midst of the general grief, and the 
corpse still lying above, he had leisure to conclude that he 
would have it all holidays for the future, that he wouldn’t get 
up till he liked, or stand the bullying of the Doctor any more, 
and had made a hundred of such day dreams and resolves for 
the future. How one’s thoughts will travel ! and how quickly 
our wishes beget them ! When he with Laura in his hand went 
into the kitchen on his way to the dog-kennel, the fowl-houses, 
and other his favorite haunts, all the servants there assembled 
in great silence with their friends, and the laboring men and their 
wives, and Sally Porter who went with the post-bag to Claver- 
ing, and the baker’s man from Clavering — all there assembled 
and drinking beer on the melancholy occasion — rose up on his 
entrance and bowed or curtseyed to him. They never used to 
do so last holidays, he felt at once and with indescribable 
pleasure. The cook cried out, “ O Lord,” and whispered, 
“ How Master Arthur do grow ! ” Thomas, the groom, in the 
act of drinking, put down the jug alarmed before his master. 
Thomas’s master felt the honor keenly. He went through and 
looked at the pointers. As Flora put her nose up to his waist- 
coat, and Ponto, yelling with pleasure, hurtled at his chain, Pen 
patronized the dogs, and said, “ Poo Ponto, poo Flora,” in his 
most condescending manner. And then he went and looked at 
Laura’s hens, and at the pigs, and at the orchard, and at the 
dairy ; perhaps he blushed to think that it was only last holidays 
he had in a manner robbed the great apple-tree, and been 
scolded by the dairymaid for taking cream. 


PENDENNIS. 


27 


They buried John Pendennis, Esquire, “ formerly an eminent 
medical practitioner at Bath, and subsequently an able magis- 
trate, a benevolent landlord, and a benefactor to many charities 
and public institutions in this neighborhood and county,” with 
one of the most handsome funerals that had been seen since 
Sir Roger Clavering was buried here> the clerk said, in the 
abbey church of Clavering St. Mary’s. A fair marble slab, 
from which the above inscription is copied, was erected over 
the Fairoaks’ pew in the church. On it you may see the Pen 
dennis coat of arms and crest, an eagle looking towards the sun, 
with the motto “ nee tenui pennd” to the present day. Doctor 
Portman alluded to the deceased most handsomely and affect- 
ingly, as “ our dear departed friend,” in his sermon next 
Sunday ; and Arthur Pendennis reigned in his stead. 


CHAPTER III. 

IN WHICH PENDENNIS APPEARS AS A VERY YOUNG MAN INDEED. 

Arthur was about sixteen years old, we have said, when 
he began to reign ; in person, he had what his friends would 
call a dumpy, but his mamma styled a neat little figure. His 
hair was of a healthy brown color, which looks like gold in the 
sunshine, his face was round, rosy, freckled, and good-humored, 
his whiskers were decidedly of a reddish hue ; in fact, without 
being a beauty, he had such a frank, good-natured kind face, 
and laughed so merrily at you out of his honest blue eyes, that 
no wonder Mrs. Pendennis thought him the pride of the whole 
country. Between the ages of sixteen and eighteen he rose 
from five feet six to five feet eight inches in height, at which 
altitude he paused. But his mother wondered at it. He was 
three inches taller than his father. Was it possible that any 
man could grow to be three inches taller than Mr. Pendennis ? 

You may be certain he never went back to school ; the dis- 
cipline of the establishment did not suit him, and he liked 
being at home much better. The question of his return was 
debated, and his uncle was for his going back. The Doctor 
wrote his opinion that it was most important for Arthur’s suc- 
cess in after-life that he should know a Greek play thoroughly, 
but Pen adroitly managed to hint to his mother what a danger- 
ous place Grey Friars was, and what sad wild fellows some of 


2S 


PENDENNIS. 


the chaps there were, and the timid soul, taking alarm at once, 
acceded to his desire to stay at home. 

Then Pen’s uncle offered to use his influence with His Royal 
Highness the Commander-in-Chief, who was pleased to be very 
kind to him, and proposed to get Pen a commission in the Foot 
Guards. Pen’s heart leaped at this : he had been to hear the 
band at St. James’s play on a Sunday, when he went out to his 
uncle. He had seen Tom Ricketts, of the fourth form, who 
used to wear a jacket and trousers so ludicrously tight, that the 
elder boys could not forbear using him in the quality of a butt 
or “ cockshy ” — he had seen this very Ricketts arrayed in crim- 
son and gold, with an immense bear skin cap on his head, 
staggering under the colors of the regiment. Tom had recog- 
nized him and gave him a patronizing nod. Tom, a little 
wretch whom he had cut over the back with a hockey-stick last 
quarter — and there he was in the centre of the square, rallying 
round the flag of his country, surrounded by bayonets, cross- 
belts, and scarlet, the band blowing trumpets and banging 
cymbals — talking familiarly to immense warriors with tufts to 
their chins and Waterloo medals. What would not Pen have 
given to enter such a service ? 

But Helen Pendennis, when this point was proposed to her 
by her son, put on a face full of terror and alarm. She said 
“ she did not quarrel with others who thought differently, but 
that in her opinion a Christian had no right to make the army 
a profession. Mr. Pendennis never, never would have permit- 
ted his son to be a soldier. Finally, she should be very unhappy 
if he thought of it.” Now Pen would have as soon cut off his 
nose and ears as deliberately, and of aforethought malice, made 
his mother unhappy ; and, as he was of such a generous disposi- 
tion that he would give away anything to any one, he instantly 
made a present of his visionary red coat and epaulettes to his 
mother. 

She thought him the noblest creature in the world. But 
Major Pendennis, when the offer of the commission was ac- 
knowledged and refused, wrote back a curt and somewhat angry 
letter to the widow, and thought his nephew was rather a 
spooney. 

He was contented, however, when he saw the boy’s perform- 
ances out hunting at Christmas, when the Major came down as 
usual to Fairoaks. Pen had a very good mare, and rode her 
with uncommon pluck and grace. He took his fences with 
great coolness and judgment. He wrote to the chaps at school 
about his top-boots, and his feats across country. He began to 


PEND ENNIS 


2 9 


think seriously or a scarlet coat : and his mother must own that 
she thought it would become him remarkably well : though, ot 
course, she passed hours of anguish during his absence, and 
daily expected to see him brought home on a shutter. 

With these amusements, in rather too great plenty, it must 
not be assumed that Pen neglected his studies altogether. He 
had a natural taste for reading every possible kind of book 
which did not fall into his school-course. It was only when 
they forced his head into the waters of knowledge that he re- 
fused to drink. He devoured all the books at home, from 
Inchbald’s Theatre to White’s Farrier}*; he ransacked the 
neighboring book-cases. He found at Clavering an old cargo 
of French novels, which he read with all his might ; and he 
would sit for hours perched up on the topmost bar of Doctor 
Portman’s library steps with a folio on his knees, whether it 
were Hakluyt’s Travels, Hobbes’s Leviathan, Augustini Opera, 
or Chaucers Poems. He and the Vicar were very good friends, 
and from his Reverence, Pen learned that honest taste for port- 
wine which distinguished him through life. And as for Mrs. 
Portman, who was not in the least jealous, though her Doctor 
avowed himself in love with Mrs. Pendennis, whom he pro- 
nounced to be by far the finest lady in the country — all her 
grief was, as she looked up fondly at Pen perched on the book- 
ladder, that her daughter, Minny, was too old for him — as 
indeed she was — Miss Maria Portman being at that period only 
two years younger than Pen’s mother, and weighing as much as 
Pen and Mrs. Pendennis together. 

Are these details insipid ? Look back, good friend, at your 
own youth and ask how was that ? I like to think of a well- 
natured boy, brave and gentle, warm-hearted and loving, and 
looking the world in the face with kind honest eyes. What 
bright colors it wore then, and how you enjoyed it ! A man 
has not many years of such time. He does not know them 
whilst they are with him. It is only when they are passed 
along that he remembers how dear and happy they were. 

Mr. Smirke, Dr. Portman’s curate, was engaged at a liberal 
salary, to walk or ride over from Clavering and pass several 
hours daily with the young gentleman. Smirke was a man 
perfectly faultless at a tea-table, wore a curl on his fair forehead, 
and tied his neck-cloth with a melancholy grace. He was a 
decent scholar and mathematician, and taught Pen as much as 
the lad was ever disposed to learn, which was not much. For 
Pen had soon taken the measure of his tutor, who, when he 
came riding into the court-yard at Fairoaks on his pony, turned 


30 


PEN.OENNI S. 


out his toes so absurdly, and left such a gap between his knees 
and the saddle, that it was impossible for any lad endowed with 
a sense of humor to respect such an equestrian. He nearly 
killed Smirke with terror by putting him on his mare, and tak- 
ing him a ride over a common, where the county fox-hounds 
(then hunted by that staunch old sportsman, Mr. Hardhead, of 
Dumplingbeare) happened to meet. Mr. Smirke, on Pen’s 
mare, Rebecca (she was named after Pen’s favorite heroine, the 
daughter of Isaac of York), astounded the hounds as much as 
he disgusted the huntsman, laming one of the former by per- 
sisting in riding amongst the pack, and receiving a speech from 
the latter, more remarkable for energy of language, than any 
oration he had ever heard since he left the bargemen on the 
banks of Isis. 

Smirke and his pupil read the ancient poets together, and 
rattled through them at a pleasant rate, very different from that 
steady grubbing pace with which the Cistercians used to go 
over the classic ground, scenting out each word as they went, 
and digging up every root in the way. Pen never liked to halt, 
but made his tutor construe when he was at fault, and thus 
galloped through the Iliad and the Odyssey, the tragic play- 
writers, and the charming wicked Aristophanes (whom he vowed 
to be the greatest poet of all). But he went so fast that, though L 
he certainly galloped through a considerable extent of the an- 
cient country, he clean forgot it in after-life, and had only such a 
vague remembrance of his early classic course as a man has in 
the House of Commons, let us say, w’ho still keeps up two or 
three quotations ; or a reviewer who just for decency’s sake, 
hints at a little Greek.. 

Besides the ancient poets, you may be sure Pen read the 
English with great gusto. Smirke sighed and shook his head 
sadly both about Byron and Moore. But Pen was a sworn fire- 
worshipper and a Corsair ; he had them by heart, and used to 
take little Laura into the window and say, “ Zuleika, I am not 
thy brother,” in tones so tragic, that they caused the solemn 
little maid to open her great eyes still wider. She sat, until 
the proper, hour for retirement, sewing at Mrs. Pendennis’s 
knee, and listening to Pen reading out to her of nights without 
comprehending one word of what he read. 

He read Shakspeare to his mother (which she said she liked, 
but didn’t), and Byron, and Pope, and his favorite Lalla Rookh, 
which pleased her indifferently. But as for Bishop Heber, 
and Mrs. Hemans above all, this lady used to melt right away, 
and be absorbed into her pocket-handkerchief, when Pen read 


PENDENNIS. 


31 


those authors to hei in his kind boyish voice. The “ Christian 
Year ” was a book which appeared about that time. The 
son and the mother whispered it to each other with awe — * 
Faint, very faint, and seldom in after-life Pendennis heard that 
solemn church-music : but he always loved the remembrance 
of it, and of the times when it struck on his heart, and he 
walked over the fields full of hope and void of doubt, as the 
church-bells rang on Sunday morning. 

It was at this period of his existence that Pen broke out in 
the Poets’ Corner of the County Chronicle, with some verses 
with which he was perfectly well satisfied. His are the verses 
signed “ NEP.,” addressed “To a Tear;” “On the Anni- 
versary of the Battle of Waterloo;” “To Madame Caradori 
singing at the Assize Meetings;” “On Saint Bartholomew’s 
Day ” (a tremendous denunciation of Popery, and a solemn 
warning to the people of England to rally against emancipating 
the Roman Catholics), &c., &c., — all which master-pieces, poor 
Mrs. Pendennis kept along with his first socks, the first 
cutting of his hair, his bottle, and other interesting relics of 
his infancy. He used to gallop Rebecca over the neighboring 
Dumpling Downs, or into the county town, which, if you please, 
we shall call Chatteris, spouting his own poems, and filled with 
quite a Byronic afflatus as he thought. 

His genius at this time was of a decidedly gloomy cast. He 
brought his mother a tragedy, at which, though he killed 
sixteen people before the second act, Helen laughed so, that 
he thrust the master-piece into the fire in a pet. He projected 
an epic poem in blank verse, “ Cortez, or the Conqueror of 
Mexico, and the Inca’s daughter.” He wrote part of “ Seneca, 
or the Fatal Bath,” and “ Ariadne in Naxos ;” classical pieces, 
with choruses and strophes and antistrophes, which sadly 
puzzled Mrs. Pendennis ; and began a “ History of the Jesuits,” 
in which he lashed that Order with tremendous severity. His 
loyalty did his mother’s heart good to witness. He was a 
staunch, unflinching Church-and-King man in those days ; and 
at the election, when Sir Giles Beanfield stood on the Blue 
interest, against Lord Trehawk, Lord Eyrie’s son, a Whig and 
a friend of Popery, Arthur Pendennis, with an immense bow 
for himself, which his mother made with a blue ribbon for 
Rebecca, rode alongside of the Reverend Doctor Portman, on 
his gray mare Dowdy, and at the head of the Clavering voters, 
whom the Doctor brought up to plump for the Protestant 
Champion. 

On that day Pen made his first speech at the Blue Hotel : 


32 


PENDENNIS. 


and also, it appears, for the first time in his life — took a little 
more wine than was good for him. Mercy ! what a scene it was 
at Fairoaks, when he rode back at ever so much o’clock at 
night. What moving abQut of lanterns in the court-yard and 
stables, though the moon was shining out ; what a gathering of 
servants, as Pen came home, clattering over the bridge and up 
the stable-yard, wifh half-a-score of the Clavering voters yelling 
after him the Blue song of the election. 

He wanted them all to come in and have some wine — some 
very good Madeira — some capital Madeira — John, go and get 
some Madeira — and there is no knowing what the farmers 
would have done, had not Madam Pendennis made her appear- 
ance in a white wrapper, with a candle — and scared those 
zealous Blues so by the sight of her pale handsome face, that 
they touched their hats and rode off. 

Besides these amusements and occupations in which Mr. 
Pen indulged, there was one which forms the main business 
and pleasure of youth, if the poets tell us aright, whom Pen was 
always studying ; and which, ladies, you have rightly guessed 
to be that of Love. Pen sighed for it first in secret, and, like 
the love-sick swain in Ovid, opened his breast and said, “ Aura, 
veni.” What generous youth is there that has not courted 
some such windy mistress in his time ? 

Yes, Pen began to feel the necessity of a first love — of a 
consuming passion — of an object on which he could concentrate 
all those vague floating fancies under which he sweetly suffered 
— of a young lady to whom he could really make verses, and 
whom he could set up and adore, in place of those unsub- 
stantial Ianthes and Zuleikas to whom he addressed the out- 
pourings of his gushing muse. He read his favorite poems 
over and over again, he called upon Alma Venus the delight 
of gods and men, he translated Anacreon’s odes, and picked 
out passages suitable to his complaint from Waller, Dryden, 
Prior, and the like. Smirke and he were never weary, in their 
interview, of discoursing about love. The faithless tutor enter- 
tained him with sentimental conversations in place of lectures 
on algebra and Greek ; for Smirke was in love too. Who could 
help it, being in daily intercourse with such a woman ? Smirke 
was madly in love (as far as such a mild flame as Mr. Smirke’s 
may be called madness) with Mrs. Pendennis. That honest 
lady, sitting down below stairs teaching little Laura to play the 
piano, or devising flannel petticoats for the poor round about 
her, or otherwise busied with the calm routine of her modest 
and spotless Christian life, was little aware what storms were 


PENDENNIS. 


33 


brewing in two bosoms up stairs in the study — in Pen’s as he 
sat in his shooting-jacket, with his elbows on the green study- 
table, and his hands clutching his curly brown hair, Homer 
under his nose, — and in worthy Mr. Smirke’s, with whom he 
was reading. Here they would talk about Helen and Andre* ■ 
mache. “ Andromache’s like my mother,” Pen used to avouch 
“ but I say, Smirke, by Jove I’d cut off my nose to see Helen ; ’ 
and he would spout certain favorite lines which the reader wil' 
find in their proper place in the third book. He drew portrait) 
of her — they are extant still — with Straight noses and enormous* 
eyes, and “ Arthur Pendennis delineavit et pinxit ” gallantly 
written underneath. 

As for Mr. Smirke he naturally preferred Andromache. 
And in consequence he was uncommonly kind to Pen. He gave 
him his Elzevir Horace, of which the boy was fond, and his little 
Greek Testament which his own mamma at Clapham had pur- 
chased and presented to him. He bought him a silver pencil- 
case ; and in the matter of learning let him do just as much or 
as little as ever he pleased. He always seemed to be on the 
point of unbosoming himself to Pen : nay, he confessed to the 
latter that he had a — an attachment, an ardently cherished at- 
tachment, about which Pendennis longed to hear, and said, “ Tell 
us, old chap, is she handsome ? has she got blue eyes or black ? ” 
But Doctor Portman’s curate, heaving a gentle sigh, cast up his 
eyes to the ceiling, and begged Pen faintly to change the conver- 
sation. Poor Smirke ! He invited Pen to dine at his lodgings 
over Madame Fribsby’s, the milliner’s, in Clavering, and once 
when it was raining, and Mrs. Pendennis, who had driven in her 
pony-chaise into Clavering with respect to some arrangements, 
about leaving off mourning probably, was prevailed upon to enter 
the curate’s apartments, he sent for pound-cakes instantly. The 
sofa on which she sat became sacred to him from that day : 
and he kept flowers in the glass which she drank from ever after. 

As Mrs. Pendennis was never tired of hearing the praises 
of her son, we may be certain that this rogue of a tutor neg- 
lected no opportunity of conversing with her upon the subject. 
It might be a little tedious to him to hear the stories about 
Pen’s generosity, about his bravery in fighting the big naughty 
boy, about his fun and jokes, about his prodigious skill 
in Latin, music, riding, &c. — but what price would he not 
pay to be in her company ? and the widow, after these conver- 
sations, thought Mr. Smirke a very pleasing and well-informed 
man. As for her son, she had not settled in her mind, whether 
he was to be Senior Wrangler and Archbishop of Canterbury, 

3 


34 


PENDENNIS . 


or Double First Class at Oxford, and Lord Chancellor. That 
all England did not possess his peer, was a fact about which 
there was, in her mind, no manner of question. 

A simple person, of inexpensive habits, she began forthwith 
to save, and, perhaps, to be a little parsimonious, in favor of 
her boy. There were no entertainments, of course, at Fairoaks, 
during the year of her weeds. Nor, indeed, did the Doctor’s 
silver dish-covers, of which he was so proud, and which were 
flourished all over with the arms of the Pendennises, and sur- 
mounted with their crest, come out of the plate-chest again for 
long, long years. The household was diminished, and its ex- 
penses curtailed. There was a very blank anchorite repast 
when Pen dined from home : and he himself headed the re- 
monstrance from the kitchen regarding the deteriorated quality 
of the Fairoaks beer. She was becoming miserly for Pen. In- 
deed, who ever accused women of being just? They are al- 
ways sacrificing themselves or somebody for some body else’s 
sake. 

There happened to be no young woman in the small circle 
of friends who were in the widow’s intimacy whom Pendennis 
could by any possibility gratify by endowing her with the in- 
estimable treasure of a heart which he was longing to give 
away. Some young fellows in this predicament bestow their 
young affections upon Dolly, the dairymaid, or cast the eyes of 
tenderness upon Molly, the blacksmith’s daughter. Pen thought 
a Pendennis much too grand a personage to stoop so low. He 
was too high-minded for a vulgar intrigue, and at the idea of a 
seduction, had he ever entertained it, his heart would have re- 
volted as from the notion of any act of baseness or dishonor. 
Miss Mira Portman was too old, too large, and too fond of 
reading “ Rollin’s Ancient History.” The Miss Boardbacks, 
(daughters of St. Vincent’s, or Fourth of June House, as it was 
called), disgusted Pen with the London airs which they brought 
into the country. Captain Glanders’s (H. P., 50th Dragoon 
Guards) three girls were in brown-holland pinafores as yet, 
with the ends of' their hair-plaits tied up in dirty pink ribbon. 
Not having acquired the art of dancing, the youth avoided such 
chances as he might have had of meeting with the fair sex at 
the Chatteris Assemblies : in fine, he was not in love, because 
there was nobody at hand to fall in love with. And the young 
monkey used to ride out, day after day, in quest of Dulcinea ; 
and peep into the pony-chaises and gentlefolks’ carriages, as 
they drove along the broad turnpike roads, with a heart beating 
within him, and a secret tremor and hope that she might be in 


PENDENNIS. 


35 


that yellow post-chaise coming swinging up the hill, or one of 
those three girls in beaver bonnets in the back seat of the 
double gig, which the fat old gentleman in black was driving, 
at four miles an hour. The post-chaise contained a snuffy old 
dowager of seventy, with a maid, her contemporary. The 
three girls in the beaver bonnets were no handsomer than the 
turnips that skirted the roadside. Do as he might, and ride 
where he would, the fairy princess whom he was to rescue and 
win, had not yet appeared to honest Pen. 

Upon these points he did not discourse to his mother. He 
had a world of his own. What ardent, imaginative soul has 
not a secret pleasure-place in which it disports ? Let no 
clumsy prying or dull meddling of ours try to disturb it in our 
children. Actaeon was a brute for wanting to push in where 
Diana was bathing. Leave him occasionally alone, my good 
madam, if you have a poet for a child. Even your admirable 
advice may be a bore sometimes. Yonder little child may 
have thoughts too deep even for your great mind, and fancies 
so coy and timid that they will not bare themselves when your 
ladyship sits by. 

Helen Pendennis by the force of sheer love divined a great 
number of her son’s secrets. But she kept these things in her 
heart (if we may so speak), and did not speak of them. 
Besides, she had made up her mind that he was to marry little 
Laura : she would be eighteen when Pen was six-and-twenty ; 
and had finished his college career ; and had made his grand 
tour ; and was settled either in London, astonishing all the 
metropolis by his learning and eloquence at the bar, or better 
still in a sweet country parsonage surrounded with hollyhocks 
and roses, close to a delightful romantic ivy-covered church, 
from the pulpit of which Pen would utter the most beautiful 
sermons ever preached. 

While these natural sentiments were waging war and trouble 
in honest Pen’s bosom, it chanced one day that he rode into 
Chatteris for the purpose of carrying to the County Chronicle 
a tremendous and thrilling poem for the next week’s paper ; 
and putting up his horse according to custom, at the stables of 
the George Hotel there, he fell in with an old acquaintance. 
A grand black tandem, with scarlet wheels, came rattling into 
the inn yard, as Pen stood there in converse with the ostler 
about Rebecca ; and the voice of the driver called out, “ Hallo, 
Pendennis, is that you ? ” in a loud patronizing manner. Pen 
had some difficulty in recognizing, under the broad-brimmed 


PENDENNIS . 


36 

hat and the vast great-coats and neck-cloths, with which the new- 
comer was habited, the person and figure of his quondam 
schoolfellow, Mr. Foker. 

A year’s absence had made no small difference in that gen- 
tleman. A youth who had been deservedly whipped a few 
months previously, and who spent his pocket-money on tarts, 
and hardbake, now appeared before Pen in one of those cos- 
tumes to which the public consent, which I take to be quite as 
influential in this respect as “Johnson’s Dictionary,” has 
awarded the title of “ Swell.” He had a bull-dog between his 
legs, and in his scarlet shawl neck-cloth, was a pin representing 
another bull-dog in gold : he wore a fur waistcoat laced over 
with gold chains ; a green cutaway coat with basket buttons, 
and a white upper-coat ornamented with cheese-plate buttons, 
on each of which was engraved some stirring incident of the 
road or the chase ; all of which ornaments set off this young 
fellow’s figure to such advantage, that you would hesitate to say 
which character in life he most resembled, and whether he was a 
boxer en goguette, or a coachman in his gala suit. 

“ Left that place for good, Pendennis.? ” Mr. Foker said, 
descending from his landau and giving Pendennis a finger. 

“ Yes, this year or more,” Pen said. 

“ Beastly old hole,” Mr. Foker remarked. “ Hate it. Hate 
the Doctor : hate Towzer, the second master ; hate everybody 
there. Not a fit place for a gentleman.” 

“ Not at all,” said Pen, with an air of the utmost conse- 
quence. 

“ By gad, sir, I sometimes dream, now, that the Doctor’s 
walking into me,” Foker continued (and Pen smiled as he 
thought that he himself had likewise fearful dreams of this 
nature). “ When I think of the diet there, by gad, sir, I won- 
der how I stood it. Mangy mutton, brutal beef, pudding on 
Thursdays and Sundays, and that fit to poison you. Just look 
at my leader — did you ever see a prettier animal ? Drove 
over from Baymouth. Came the nine mile in two-and-forty 
minutes. Not bad going, sir.” 

“ Are you stopping at Bay mouth, ‘Foker ? ” Pendennis asked. 

“ I’m coaching there,” said the other with a nod. 

“ What ? ” asked Pen, and in a tone of such wonder, that 
Foker burst out laughing, and said, “ He was blowed if he 
didn’t think Pen was such a flat as not to know what coaching 
meant.” 

“ I’m come down with a coach from Oxbridge. A tutor, 
don’t you see, old boy ? He’s coaching me, and some other 


PENDENNIS. 


37 


men, for the little go. Me and Spavin have the drag between 
us. And I thought I’d just tool over, and go to the play. 
Did you ever see Rowkins do the hornpipe ? ” and Mr. Foker 
began to perform some steps of the popular dance in the inn 
yard, looking round for the sympathy of his groom, and the 
stable men. 

Pen thought he would like to go to the play too : and could 
ride home afterwards, as there was a moonlight. So he ac- 
cepted Foker’s invitation to dinner, and the young men entered 
the inn together, where Mr. Foker stopped at the bar, and 
called upon Miss Rummer, the landlady’s fair daughter, who 
presided there, to give him a glass of “ his mixture.” 

Pen and his family had been known at the George ever 
since they came into the county ; and Mr. Pendennis’s carriage 
and horses always put up there when he paid a visit to the 
county town. The landlady dropped the heir of Fairoaks a 
very respectful curtsey, and complimented him upon his growth 
and manly appearance, and asked news of the family at Fair- 
oaks, and of Dr. Portman and the Clavering people, to all of 
which questions the young gentleman answered with much af- 
fability. But he spoke to Mr. and Mrs. Rummer with that sort 
of good-nature with which a young Prince addresses his father’s 
subjects ; never dreaming that those “ bonnes gens ” were his 
equals in life. 

Mr. Foker’s behavior was quite different. He inquired for 
Rummer and the cold in his nose, told Mrs. Rummer a riddle, 
asked Miss Rummer when she would be ready to marry him, 
and paid his compliments to Miss Brett, the other young lady 
in the bar, all in a minute of time, and with a liveliness and 
facetiousness which set all these ladies in a giggle ; and he 
gave a cluck, expressive of great satisfaction as he tossed off 
his mixture which Miss Rummer prepared and handed to him. 

“ Have a drop,” said he to Pen. “ Give the young one a 
glass, R., and score it up to yours truly.” 

Poor Pen took a glass, and everybody laughed at the face 
which he made as he put it down — Gin, bitters, and some other 
cordial, was the compound with which Mr. Foker was so de- 
lighted as to call it by the name of Foker’s own. As Pen 
choked, sputtered, and made faces, the other took occasion to 
remark to Mr. Rummer that the young fellow was green, very 
green, but that he would soon form him ; and then they pro- 
ceeded to order dinner — which Mr. Foker determined should 
consist of turtle and venison ; cautioning the landlady to be 
very particular about icing the wine. 


38 


PENDENNTS. 


Then Messrs. Foker and Pen strolled down the High Stree* 
together — the former having a cigar in his mouth, which he had 
drawn out of a case almost as big as a portmanteau. He went 
in to replenish it at Mr. Lewis’s, and talked to that gentleman for 
a while, sitting down on the counter : he then looked in at the 
fruiterer’s, to see the pretty girl there : then they passed the 
County Chronicle .office, for which Pen had his packet ready, 
in the shape of “ Lines to Thyrza,” but poor Pen did not like 
to put the letter into the editor’s box while walking in company 
with such a fine gentleman as Mr. Foker. They met heavy 
dragoons of the regiment always quartered at Chatteris ; and 
stopped and talked about the Baymouth balls, and what a 
pretty girl was Miss Brown, and what a dem -fine woman Mrs. 
Jones was. It was in vain that Pen recalled to his own mind 
how stupid Foker used to be at school — how he could scarcely 
read, how he was not cleanly in his person, and notorious for 
his blunders and dulness. Mr. Foker was not much more re- 
fined now than in his school days : and yet Pen felt a secret 
pride in strutting down High Street with a young fellow who 
owned tandems, talked to officers, and ordered turtle and 
champagne for dinner. He listened, and with respect too, to 
Mr. Foker’s account of what the men did at the University of 
which Mr. F. was an ornament, and encountered a long series 
of stories about boat-racing, bumping, College grass-plots, and 
milk-punch — and began to wish to go up himself to College to 
a place where there were such manly pleasures and enjoyments. 
Farmer Gurnett, who lives close by Fairoaks, riding by at this 
minute and touching his hat to Pen, the latter stopped him, 
and sent a message to his mother to say that he had met with 
an old schoolfellow, and should dine in Chatteris. 

The two young gentlemen continued their walk, and were 
passing round the Cathedral Yard, where they could hear the 
music of the afternoon service (a music which always exceed- 
ingly affected Pen), but whither Mr. Foker came for the pur- 
pose of inspecting the nursery-maids who frequent the Elms 
Walk there, and here they strolled until with a final burst of 
music the small congregation was played out. 

Old Doctor Portman was one of the few who came from the 
venerable gate. Spying Pen, he came and shook him by the 
hand, and eyed with wonder Pen’s friend, from whose mouth 
and cigar clouds of fragrance issued, which curled round the 
Doctor’s honest face and shovel hat. 

“An old schoolfellow of mine, Mr. Foker,” said Pen. The 
Doctor said “ H’m ” : and scowled at the cigar. He did not 


PENDENNIS . 


39 

mind a pipe in his study, but the cigar was an abomination to 
the worthy gentleman. 

“ I came up on Bishop’s business,” the Doctor said. “We’ll 
ride home, Arthur, if you like ? ” 

“ I — I’m engaged to my friend here,” Pen answered. 

“ You had better come home with me,” said the Doctor. 

“ His mother knows he’s out, sir,” Mr. Foker remarked : 
“ don’t she Pendennis ? ” 

“ But that does not prove that he had not better come home 
with me,” the Doctor growled, and he walked off with great 
dignity. 

“Old boy don’t like the weed, I suppose,” Foker said. 
“ Ha ! who’s here ? — here’s the General, and Bingley, the 
manager. How do, Cos ? How do, Bingley ? ” 

“ How does my worthy and gallant young Foker ? ” said 
the gentleman addressed as the General ; and who wore a 
shabby military cape with a mangy collar, and a hat cocked 
very much over one eye. 

“ Trust you are very well, my dear sir,” said the other gen- 
tleman, “ and that the Theatre Royal will have the honor of 
your patronage to-night. We perform ‘ The Stranger,’ in which 
your humble servant wall — ” 

“ Can’t stand you in tights and Hessians, Bingley,” young 
Mr. Foker said. On which the General, with the Irish accent, 
said, “ But I think ye’ll like Miss Fotheringay, in Mrs. Haller, 
or me name’s not Jack Costigan.” 

Pen looked at these individuals with the greatest interest. 
He had never seen an actor before ; and he saw Dr. Portman’s 
red face looking over the Doctor’s shoulder, as he retreated 
from the Cathedral Yard, evidently quite dissatisfied with the 
acquaintances into whose hands Pen had fallen. 

Perhaps it would have been much better for him had he 
taken the parson’s advice and company home. But which of 
us knows his fate ? 


CHAPTER IV. 

MRS. HALLER. 

Having returned to the George, Mr. Foker and his guest 
sat down to a handsome repast in the coffee-room ; where Mr. 
Rummer brought in the first dish, and bowed as gravely as if 


40 


PENDENNIS. 


he was waiting upon the Lord-Lieutenant of the county. Pen 
could not but respect Foker’s connoisseurship as he pro- 
nounced the champagne to be condemned gooseberry, and 
winked at the port with one eye. The latter he declared to be 
of the right sort ; and told the waiters, there was no way of 
humbugging him. All these attendants he knew by their 
Christian names, and showed a great interest in their families ; 
and as the London coaches drove up, which in those early 
days used to set off from the George, Mr. Foker flung the 
coffee-room window open, and called the guards and coachmen 
by their Christian names, too, asking about their respective 
families, and imitating with great liveliness and accuracy the 
tooting of the horns as Jem the ostler whipped the horses’ 
cloths off, and the carriages drove gayly away. 

“ A bottle of sherry, a bottle of sham, a bottle of port and 
a shass caffy, it ain’t so bad, hay, Pen ? ” Foker said, and pro- 
nounced, after all these delicacies and a quantity of nuts and 
fruit had been dispatched, that it was time to “ toddle.” Pen 
sprang up with very bright eyes, and a flushed face ; and they 
moved off towards the theatre, where they paid their money to 
the wheezy old lady slumbering in the money-taker’s box. 
“ Mrs. Dropsicum, Bingley’s mother-in-law, great in Lady Mac- 
beth,” Foker said to his companion. Foker knew her, too. 

They had almost their choice of places in the boxes of the 
theatre, which was no better filled than country theatres usually 
are in spite of the “ universal burst of attraction and galvanic 
thrills of delight ” advertized by Bingley in the-playbills. A 
score or so of people dotted the pit-benches, a few more kept 
a kicking and whistling in the galleries, and a dozen others, 
who came in with free admissions, were in the boxes where our 
young gentlemen sat. Lieutenant Rodgers and Podgers, and 
young Cornet Tidmus, of the Dragoons, occupied a private 
box. The performers acted to them, and these gentlemen 
seemed to hold conversations with the players when not en- 
gaged in the dialogue, and applauded them by name loudly. 

Bingley the manager, who assumed all the chief tragic and 
comic parts except when he modestly retreated to make way 
for the London stars, w r ho came down occasionally to Chatteris ; 
was great in the character of the “ Stranger.” He was attired 
in the tight pantaloons and Hessian boots which the stage 
legend has given to that injured man, with a large cloak and 
beaver and a horse-feather in it drooping over his raddled old 
face, and only partially concealing his great buckled brown 
wig. He had the stage-jewelry on too, of which he selected 


PENDENNIS. 


41 


the largest and most shiny rings for himself, and allowed his 
little finger to quiver out of his cloak with a sham diamond 
ring covering the first joint of the finger and twiddling in the 
faces of the pit. Bingley made it a favor to the young men of 
his company to go on in light comedy parts with that ring. 
They flattered him by asking its history. The stage has its 
traditional jewels, as the Crown and all great families have. 
This had belonged to George Frederick Cooke, who had had it 
from Mr. Quin, who may have bought it for a shilling. Bingley 
fancied the world was fascinated with its glitter. 

He was reading out of the stage-book — that wonderful 
stage-book — which is not bound like any other book in the 
world, but is rouged and tawdry like the hero or heroine who 
holds it ; and who holds it as people never do hold books : and 
points with his finger to a passage, and wags his head ominously 
at the audience, and then lifts up eyes and finger to the ceiling, 
professing to derive some intense consolation from the work 
between which and heaven there is a strong affinity. 

As soon as the Stranger saw the young men, he acted at 
them ; eyeing them solemnly over his gilt volume as he lay on 
the stage-bank showing his hand, his ring, and his Hessians. 
He calculated the effect that every one of these ornaments 
would produce upon his victims : he was determined to fascinate 
them, for he knew they had paid their money ; and he saw their 
families coming in from the country and filling the cane chairs 
in his boxes. 

As he lay on the bank reading, his servant, Francis, made 
remarks upon his master. 

“ Again reading,” said Francis, “thus it is, from morn to 
night. To him nature has no beauty — life no charm. For 
three years I have never seen him smile ” (the gloom of Bingley’s 
face was fearful to witness during these comments of the faith- 
ful domestic). “ Nothing diverts him. O, if he would but 
attach himself to any living thing, were it an animal — for some- 
thing man must love.” 

[Enter Tobias ( Gol 7) from the hut\. He cries, “ O, how 
refreshing, after seven long weeks, to feel these warm sunbeams 
once again. Thanks, bounteous heaven, for the joy I taste ! ” 
He presses his cap between his hands, looks up and prays. 
The Stranger eyes him attentively, 

Francis to the Stranger . “ This old man’s share of earthly 

happiness can be but little. Yet mark how grateful he is for 
his portion of it.” 

Bingley. “ Because though old, he is but a child in the 


42 


PENDENNIS. 


leading-string of hope.” (He looks steadily at Foker, who* 
however, continues to suck the top of his stick in an uncon- 
cerned manner.) 

Francis. “ Hope is the nurse of life.” 

Bingley. “ And her cradle — is the grave.” 

The Stranger uttered this with the moan of a bassoon in 
agony, and fixed his glance on Pendennis so steadily, that the 
poor lad was quite put out of countenance. He thought the 
whole house must be looking at him : and cast his eyes down. 
As soon as ever he raised them Bingley’s were at him again. 
All through the scene the manager played at him. How re- 
lieved the lad was when the scene ended, and Foker, tapping 
with his cane, cried out “ Bravo, Bingley ! ” 

“ Give him a hand, Pendennis ; you know every chap likes 
a hand,” Mr. Foker said : and the good-natured young gentle- 
man, and Pendennis laughing, and the dragoons in the opposite 
box, began clapping hands to the best of their power. 

A chamber in Wintersen Castle closed over Tobias’s hut 
and the Stranger and his boots ; and servants appeared bustling 
about with chairs and tables — “ That’s Hicks and Miss Thack- 
thwaite,” whispered Foker. “ Pretty girl, ain’t she, Pendennis ? 
But stop — hurray — bravo ! here’s the Fotheringay.” 

The pit thrilled and thumped its umbrellas ; a volley of 
applause was fired ftom the gallery : the Dragoon officers and 
Foker clapped their hands furiously : you would have thought 
the house was full, so loud were their plaudits. The red face 
and ragged whiskers of Mr. Costigan were seen peering from 
the side-scene. Pen’s eyes opened wide and bright, as Mrs. 
Haller entered with a downcast look, then rallying at the sound 
of the applause, swept the house with a grateful glance, and, 
folding her hands across her breast, sank down in a magnificent 
curtsey. More applause, more umbrellas : Pen this time, flam- 
ing with wine and enthusiasm, clapped hands and sang “ Bravo ” 
louder than all. Mrs. Haller saw him, and everybody else, and 
old Mr. Bows, the little first fiddler of the orchestra (which 
was this night increased by a detachment of the band of the 
Dragoons, by the kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail), 
looked up from the desk where he was perched, with his crutch 
beside him, and smiled at the enthusiasm of the lad. 

Those who have only seen Miss Fotheringay in later days, 
since her marriage and introduction into London life, have 
little idea how beautiful a creature she was at the time when 
our friend Pen first set eyes on her. She was of the tallest of 
women, and at her then age of six-and-twenty — for six-and- 


PENDENNIS. 


43 


twenty she was, though she vows she was only nineteen — in the 
prime and fulness of her beauty. Her forehead was vast, and 
her black hair waved over it with a natural ripple, and was con- 
fined in shining and voluminous braids at the back of a neck 
such as you see on the shoulders of the Louvre Venus — that 
delight of gods and men. Her eyes, when she lifted them up 
to gaze on you, and ere she dropped their purple deep-fringed 
lids, shone with tenderness and mystery unfathomable. Love 
and Genius seemed to look out from them and then retire coyly, 
as if ashamed to have been seen at the lattice. Who could 
have had such a commanding brow but a woman of high in- 
tellect ? She never laughed (indeed her teeth were not good), 
but a smile of endless tenderness and sweetness played round 
her beautiful lips, and in the dimples of her cheeks and her 
lovely chin. Her nose defied description in those days. Her 
ears were like two little pearl shells, which the earrings she 
wore (though the handsomest properties in the theatre) only 
insulted. She was dressed in long flowing robes of black, which 
she managed and swept to and fro -with wonderful grace, and 
out of the folds of which you only saw her sandals occasionally ; 
they were of rather a large size ; but Pen thought them as 
ravishing as the slippers of Cinderella. But it was her hand 
and arm that this magnificent creature most excelled in, and 
somehow you could never see her but through them. They 
surrounded her. When she folded them over her bosom in 
resignation ; when she dropped them in mute agony, or raised 
them in superb command ; when in sportive gayety her hands 
fluttered and waved before her, like — what shall we say? — 
like the snowy doves before the chariot of Venus — it was with 
these arms and hands that she beckoned, repelled, entreated, 
embraced her admirers — no single one, for she was armed with 
her own virtue, and with her father’s valor, whose sword would 
have leapt from its scabbard at any insult offered to his child 
— but the whole house ; which rose to her, as the phrase was, as 
she curtseyed and bowed, and charmed it. 

Thus she stood for a minute — complete and beautiful — 
as Pen stared at her. “ I say, Pen, isn’t she a stunner ? ” 
asked Mr. Foker. 

“ Hush ! ” Pen said. “ She’s speaking.” 

She began her business in a deep sweet voice. Those who 
know the play of the “ Stranger,” are aware that the remarks 
made by the various characters are not valuable in themselves, 
either for their sound sense, their novelty of observation, ox 
their poetic fancy. 


44 


PENDENNIS. 


Nobody ever talked so. If we meet idiots in life, as will 
happen, it is a great mercy that they do not use such absurdly 
fine words. The Stranger’s talk is sham, like the book he 
reads, and the hair he wears, and the bank he sits on, and the 
diamond ring he makes play with — but, in the midst of the 
balderdash, there runs that reality of love, children, and for- 
giveness of wrong, which will be listened to wherever it is 
preached, and sets all the world sympathizing. 

With what smothered sorrow, with what gushing pathos, 
Mrs. Haller delivered her part ! At first, when as Count 
Wintersen’s housekeeper, and preparing for his Excellency’s 
arrival, she has to give orders about the beds and furniture, 
and the dinner, &c., to be got ready, she did so with the calm 
agony of despair. But when she could get rid of the stupid 
servants, and give vent to her feelings to the pit and the house, 
she overflowed to each individual as if he were her particular 
confidant, and she was crying out her griefs on his shoulder : 
the little fiddler in the orchestra (whom she did not seem to 
watch, though he followed her ceaselessly) twitched, twisted, 
nodded, pointed about, and when she came to the favorite 
passage “ I have a William, too, if he be still alive — Ah, yes, 
if he be still alive. His little sisters, too ! Why, Fancy, dost 
thou rack me so ? Why dost thou image my poor children 
fainting in sickness, and crying to — to — their mum-umAr,” 
* — when she came to this passage little Bows buried his face in 
his blue cotton handkerchief, after crying out “ Bravo.” 

All the house was affected. Foker, for his part, taking out 
a large yellow bandanna, wept piteously. As for Pen, he was 
gone too far for that. He followed the woman about and 
about — when she was off the stage, it and the house were blank ; 
the lights and the red officers reeled wildly before his sight. 
He watched her at the side-scene — where she stood waiting to 
come on the stage, and where her father took off her shawl : 
when the reconciliation arrived, and she flung herself down on 
Mr. Bingley’s shoulders, whilst the children clung to their 
knees, and the Countess (Mrs. Bingley) and Baron Steinforth 
(performed with great liveliness and spirit by Garbetts), — while 
the rest of the characters formed a group round them, Pen’s 
hot eyes only saw Fotheringay, Fotheringay. The curtain fell 
upon him like a pall. He did not hear a word of what Bingley 
said, who came forward to announce the play for the next evening, 
and who took the tumultuous applause, as usual, for himself. 
Pen was not even distinctly aware that the house was calling 
for Miss Fotheringay, nor did the manager seem to comprehend 


PENDENNIS. 


45 

that anybody else but himself had caused the success of the 
play. At last he understood it — stepped back with a grin, and 
presently appeared with Mrs. Haller on his arm. How beautiful 
she looked ! Her hair had fallen down, the officers threw her 
flowers. She clutched them to her heart. She put back her 
hair, and smiled all round. Her eyes met Pen’s. Down went 
the curtain again ; and she was gpne. Not one note could he 
hear of the overture which the brass band of the dragoons blew 
by kind permission of Colonel Swallowtail. 

“ She is a crusher, ain’t she now ? ” Mr. Foker asked of his 
companion. 

Pen did not know exactly what Foker said, and answered 
vaguely. He could not tell the other what he felt ; he could 
not have spoken, just then, to any mortal. Besides, Pendennis 
did not quite know what he felt yet ; it was something over- 
whelming, maddening, delicious ; a fever of wild joy and un- 
defined longing. 

And now Rowkins and Miss Thackthwaite came on to 
dance the favorite double hornpipe, and Foker abandoned 
himself to the delights of this ballet, just as he had to the tears 
of the tragedy, a few minutes before. Pen did not care for it, 
or indeed think about the dance, except to remember that that 
woman was acting with her in the scene where she first came 
in. It was a mist before his eyes. At the end of the dance he 
looked at his wat£h and said it was time for him to go. 

“ Hang it, stay to see The Bravo of the Battle-Axe,” Foker 
said, “ Bingley’s splendid in it ; he wears red tights, and has to 
carry Mrs. B. over the Pine-bridge of the Cataract, only she’s 
too heavy. It’s great fun, do stop.” 

Pen looked at the bill with one lingering fond hope that Miss 
Fotheringay’s name might be hidden, somewhere, in the list of 
the actors of the after-piece, but there was no such name. 
Go he must. He had a long ride home. He squeezed Foker’s 
hand. He was choking to speak, but he couldn’t. He quitted 
the theatre and walked frantically about the town, he knew not 
how long ; then he mounted at the George and rode homewards, 
and Clavering clock sang out one as he came into the yard at 
Fairoaks. The lady of the house might have been awake, but 
she only heard him from the passage outside his room as he 
dashed into bed and pulled the clothes over his head. 

Pen had not been in the habit of passing wakeful nights, so 
he at once fell off into a sound sleep. Even in later days, and 
with a great deal of care and other thoughtful matter to keep 


PENDENNIS . 


46 

him awake, a man from long practice or fatigue or resolution 
begins by going to sleep as usual : and gets a nap in advance of 
Anxiety. But she soon comes up with him and jogs his shoulder, 
and says, “ Come, my man, no more of this laziness, you must 
wake up and have a talk with me.” Then they fall to together 
in the midnight. Well, whatever might afterwards happen to 
him, poor little Pen' was not come to this state yet ; he tumbled 
into a sound sleep — did not wake until an early hour in the 
morning, when the rooks began to caw from the little wood 
beyond his bedroom windows ; and — at that very instant and 
as his eyes started open, the beloved image was in his mind. 
“ My dear boy,” he heard her say, “ you were in a sound sleep, 
and I would not disturb you : but I have been close by your 
pillcw all this while : and I don’t intend that you shall leave 
me. I am Love ! I bring with me fever and passion : wild long- 
ing, maddening desire ; restless craving and seeking. Many 
a long day ere this I heard you calling out for me ; and behold 
now I am come.” 

Was Pen frightened at the summons ? Not he. He did not 
know what was coming : it was all wild pleasure and delight as 
yet. And as, when three years previously, and on entering the 
fifth form at the Cistercians, his father had made him a present 
of a gold watch which the boy took from under his pillow and 
examined on the instant of waking : forever rubbing and 
polishing it up in private and retiring into corners to listen to 
its ticking : so the young man exulted over his new delight ; 
felt in his waistcoat pocket to see that it was safe ; wound it up 
at nights, and at the very first moment of waking hugged it and 
looked at it. — By the way, that first watch of Pen’s was a showy, 
ill-manufactured piece : it never v/ent well from the beginning, 
and was always getting out of order. And after putting it aside 
into a drawer and forgetting it for some time, he swopped it 
finally away for a more useful time-keeper. 

Pen felt himself to be ever so many years older since yester- 
day. There was no mistake about it now. He was as much 
in love as the best hero in the best romance he ever read. He 
told John to bring his shaving water with the utmost confidence. 
He dressed himself in some of his finest clothes that morning : 
and came splendidly down to breakfast, patronizing his mother 
and little Laura, who had been strumming her music lesson for 
hours before ; and who, after he had read the prayers (of which 
he did not heed one single syllable), wondered at his grand 
appearance, and asked him to tell her what the play was 
about ? 


PENDENNIS. 


47 


Pen laughed and declined to tell Laura what the play was 
about. In fact it was quite as well that she should not know. 
Then she asked him why he had got on his fine pin and beautiful 
new waistcoat ? 

Pen blushed, and told his mother that the old schoolfellow 
with whom he had dined at Chatteris was reading with a tutor 
at Baymouth, a very learned man ; and as he was himself to go 
to College, and as there were several young men pursuing their 
studies at Baymouth — he was anxious to ride over — and — and 
just see what the course of their reading was. 

Laura made a long face. Helen Pendennis looked hard at 
her son, troubled more than ever with the vague doubt and 
terror which had been haunting her ever since the last night, 
when Farmer Gurnett brought back the news that Pen would 
not return home to dinner. Arthur’s eyes defied her. She 
tried to console herself, and drive off her fears. The boy had 
never told her an untruth. Pen conducted himself during 
breakfast in a very haughty and supercilious manner; and, 
taking leave of the elder and younger lady, was presently heard 
riding out of. the stable-court. He went gently at first, but 
galloped like a madman as soon as he thought that he was out 
of hearing. 

Smirke, thinking of his own affairs, and softly riding with 
his toes out, to give Pen his three hours’ reading at Fairoaks, 
met his pupil, who shot by him like the wind. Smirke’s pony 
shied, as the other thundered past him ; the gentle curate went 
over his head among the stinging-nettles in the hedge. Pen 
laughed as they met, pointed towards the Baymouth road, and 
was gone half-a-mile in that direction before poor Smirke had 
picked himself up. 

Pen had resolved in his mind that he must see Foker that 
morning ; he must hear about her ; know about her ; be with 
somebody who knew her ; and honest Smirke, for his part, sit- 
ting up among the stinging-nettles, as his pony cropped quietly 
in the hedge, thought dismally to himself, ought he go to F air- 
oaks now that his pupil was evidently gone away for the day. 
Yes, he thought he might go, too. He might go and ask Mrs. 
Pendennis when Arthur would be back ; and hear Miss Laura her 
Watts’s Catechism. He go: up on the little pony — both were 
used to his slipping off — and advanced upon the house from 
which his scholar had just rushed away in a whirlwind. 

Thus love makes fools of all of us, big and little ; and the 
curate had tumbled over head and heels in pursuit of it, and 
Pen had started in the first heat of the mad race. 


PENDENNIS. 


4 $ 


CHAPTER V. 

MRS. HALLER AT HOME. 

Without slackening his pace Pen galloped on to Baymouth, 
put the mare up at the inn stables, and ran straightway to Mr. 
Foker’s lodgings, of whom he had taken the direction on the 
previous day. On reaching these apartments, which were over 
a chemist’s shop whose stock of cigars and soda-water went off 
rapidly by the kind patronage of his young inmates, Pen only 
found Mr. Spavin, Foker’s friend, and part owner of the tandem 
which the latter had driven into Chatteris, who was smoking, 
and teaching a little dog, a friend of his, tricks with a bit of 
biscuit. 

Pen’s healthy red face fresh from the gallop, compared oddly 
with the waxy debauched little features of Foker’s chum ; Mr. 
Spavin remarked the circumstance. “ Who’s that man ? ” he 
thought, “ he looks as fresh as a bean. His hand don’t shake 
of a morning, I’d bet five to one.” 

Foker had not come home at all. Here was a disappoint- 
ment ! — Mr. Spavin could not say when his friend would return. 
Sometimes he stopped a day, sometimes a week. Of what 
college was Pen? Would he have anything? There was a 
very fair tap of ale. Mr. Spavin was enabled to know Pen- 
dennis’s name, on the card which the latter took out and laid 
down (perhaps Pen in these days was rather proud of having a 
card) — and so the young men took leave. 

Then Pen went down the rock, and walked about on the 
sand, biting his nails by the shore of the much-sounding sea. It 
stretched before him bright and immeasurable. The blue 
waters came rolling into the bay, foaming and roaring hoarsely : 
Pen looked them in the face with blank eyes, hardly regarding 
them. What a tide there was pouring into the lad’s own mind 
at the time, and what a little power had he to check it ! Pen 
flung stones into the sea, but it still kept coming on. He was 
in a rage at not seeing Foker. He wanted to see Foker. He 
must see Foker. “ Suppose I go on — on the Chatteris road, 
just to see if I can meet him,” Pen thought. Rebecca was 
saddled in another half hour, and galloping on the grass by the 
Chatteris road. About four miles from Baymouth, the Claver- 
ing road branches off, as everybody knows, and the mare 


PENDENNIS. 


49 


naturally was for taking that turn, but, cutting her over the 
shoulder, Pen passed the turning, and rode on to the turnpike 
without seeing any sign of the black tandem and red wheels. 

As he was at the turnpike he might as well go on : that was 
quite clear. So Pen rode to the George, and the ostler told 
him that Mr. Foker was there sure enough, and that “ he’d 
been a makin a tremendous row the night afore, a drinkin and 
a singin, and wanting to fight Tom the post-boy : which I’m 
thinking he’d have had the worst of it,” the man added, with a 
grin. “ Have you carried up your master’s ’ot water to shave 
with ? ” he added, in a very satirical manner, to Mr. Foker’s 
domestic, who here came down the yard bearing his master’s 
clothes, most beautifully brushed and arranged. “ Show Mr. 
Pendennis up to ’un.” And Pen followed the man at last to 
the apartment, where, in the midst of an immense bed, Mr. 
Harry Foker lay reposing. 

The feather bed and bolsters swelled up all round Mr. 
Foker, so that you could hardly see his little sallow face and 
red silk nightcap. 

“ Hullo ! ” said Pen. 

“ Who goes there ? brother, quickly tell ! ” sang out the voice 
from tire bed. “ What ! Pendennis again ? Is your Mamma 
acquainted with your absence ? Did you sup with us last night ? 
No — stop — who supped with us last night, Stoopid ? ” 

There was the three officers, sir, and Mr. Bingley, sir, and 
Mr. Costigan, sir,” the man answered, who received all Mr. 
Foker’s remarks with perfect gravity. 

“ Ah yes : the cup and merry jest went round. We chanted : 
and 1 remember I wanted to fight a post-boy. Did I thrash 
him, Stoopid ? ” 

“ No, sir. Fight didn’t come off, sir,” said Stoopid, still 
with perfect gravity. He was arranging Mr. Foker’s dressing- 
case — a trunk, the gift of a fond mother, without which the 
young fellow never travelled. It contained a prodigious 
apparatus in plate ; a silver dish, a silver mug, silver boxes and 
bottles for all sorts of essences, and a choice of razors ready 
against the time when Mr. Foker’s beard should come. 

“ Do it some other day,” said the young fellow, yawning and 
throwing up his little lean arms over his head. “ No, there was 
no fight ; but there was chanting. Bingley chanted, I chanted, 
the General chanted — Costigan I mean. — Did you ever hear 
him sing ‘ The Little Pig under the Bed,’ Pen ? ” 

“ The man we met yesterday,” said Pen, all in a tremor, 
4 the father of — ” 


4 


PEND ENNIS. 


5 ° 

“ Of the Fotheringay, — the very man. Ain’t she a Venus, 
Pen ? ” 

“ Please sir, Mr. Costigan’s in the sitting-room, sir, and says, 
sir, you asked him to breakfast, sir. Called five times, sir ; but 
wouldn’t wake you on no account • and has been year since 
eleven o’clock, sir — 

“ How much is it now ? ” 

11 One, sir/’ 

“ What would the best of mothers say,” cried the little 
sluggard, “ if she saw me in bed at this hour ? She sent me 
down here with a grinder. She wants me to cultivate my 
neglected genius — He, he ! I say, Pen, this isn’t quite like 
seven o’clock school, — is it, old boy ? ” — And the young fellow 
burst out into a boyish laugh of enjoyment. Then he added — 
“ Go in and talk to the General whilst I dress. And I say, 
Pendennis, ask him to sing you ‘ The Little Pig under the Bed; ’ 
it’s capital.” Pen went off in great perturbation to meet Mr. 
Costigan, and Mr. Foker commenced his toilet. 

Of Mr. Foker’s two grandfathers, the one from whom he in- 
herited a fortune, was a brewer ; the other was an earl, who en- 
dowed him with the most doting mother in the world. The 
Fokers had been at the Cistercian school from father to son ; at 
which place, our friend, whose name could be seen over the 
playground wall, on a public-house sign, under which “ Foker’s 
Entire ” was painted, had been dreadfully bullied on account of 
his trade, his uncomely countenance, his inaptitude for learning 
and cleanliness, his gluttony and other weak points. But those 
who know how a susceptible youth, under the tyranny of his 
schoolfellows becomes silent and a sneak, may understand how 
in a very few months after his liberation from bondage, he de- 
veloped himself as he had done ; and became the humorous, the 
sarcastic, the brilliant Foker, with whom we have made 
acquaintance. A dunce he always was, it is true ; for learning 
cannot be acquired by leaving school and entering at college as 
a fellow-commoner ; but he was now (in his own peculiar man- 
ner) as great a dandy as he before had been a slattern, and 
when he entered his sitting-room to goin his two guests, arrived 
scented and arrayed in fine linen, and perfectly splendid in 
appearance. 

General or Captain Costigan — for the latter was the rank 
which he preferred to assume — was seated in the window with 
the newspaper held before him at arm’s length. The Captain’s 
eyes were somewhat dim ; and he was spelling the paper, with 
the help of his lips, as well as of those bloodshot eyes of his, 


PEND ENNIS. 


51 


as you see gentlemen do to whom reading is a rare and difficult 
occupation. His hat was cocked very much on one ear ; and 
as one of his feet lay up in the window-seat, the observers of 
such matters might remark, by the size and shabbiness of the 
boots which the Captain wore, that times did not go very well 
with him. Poverty seems as if it were disposed, before it takes 
possession of a man entirely, to attack his extremities first : the 
coverings of his head, feet,- and hands, are its first prey. All 
these parts of the Captain’s person were particularly rakish and 
shabby. As soon as he saw Pen he descended from the window- 
seat and saluted the new-comer, first in a military manner, by 
conveying a couple of his fingers (covered with a broken black 
glove) to his hat, and then removing that ornament altogether. 
The Captain was inclined to be bald, but he brought a quantity 
of lank iron-gray hair over his pate, and had a couple of wisps 
of the same falling down on each side of his face. Much whiskey 
had spoiled what complexion Mr. Costigan may have possessed 
in his youth. His once handsome face had now a copper tinge. 
He wore a very high stock, scarred and stained in many places ; 
and a dress-coat tightly buttoned up in those parts where the 
buttons had not parted company from the garment. 

“ The young gentleman to whom I had the honor to be in- 
trojuiced yesterday in the Cathedral Yard,” said the Captain, 
with a splendid bow and wave of his hat. “ I hope I see you 
well, sir. I marked ye in the thayater last night during me 
daughter’s perfawrumance ; and missed ye on my return. I did 
but conduct her home, sir, for Jack Costigan, though poor, is a 
gentleman ; and when I reintered the house to pay me respects 
to me joyous young friend Mr. Foker — ye were gone. We had 
a jolly night of ut, sir, — Mr. Foker, the three gallant young 
dragoons, and your ’umble servant. Gad, sir, it put me in 
mind of one of our old nights when I bore her Majesty’s com- 
mission in the Foighting Hundtherd and Third.” And he 
pulled out an old snuff-box, which he presented with a stately 
air to his new acquaintance. 

Arthur was a great deal too much flurried to speak. This 

shabby-looking buck was — was her father. “ I hope Miss F , 

Miss Costigan is well, sir,” Pen said, "flushing up. “ She — she 
gave me greater pleasure, than — than I — I — I ever enjoyed at 
a play. I think, sir — I think she’s the finest actress in the 
world,” he gasped out. 

“ Your hand, young man ! for ye speak from your heart,” 
cried the Captain. “ Thank ye, sir, an old soldier and a fond 
father thanks ye. She is the finest actress in the world. I’ve 


PENDENN1S. 


52 

seen the Siddons, sir, and the O’Nale — They were great, but 
what were they compared to Miss Fotheringay ? I do not wish 
she should ashume her own name while on the stage. Me 
family, sir, are proud people ; and the Costigans of Costigans- 
town think that an honest man, who has borne her Majesty’s 
colors in the Hundtherd and Third, would demean himself, by 
permitting his daughter to earn her old father’s bread.” 

“There cannot be a more honorable duty, surely,” Pen 
said. 

“ Honorable ! Bedad, sir, I’d like to see the man who said 
Jack Costigan would consent to anything dishonorable. I have 
a heart, sir, though I am poor ; I like a man who has a heart. 
You have : I read it in your honest face and steady eye. And 
would you believe it ? ” he added, after a pause, and with a 
pathetic whisper, “ that that Bingley, who has made his fortune 
by me child, gives her but two guineas a week : out of which she 
finds herself in dresses, and which, added to me own small 
means, makes our all ? « 

Now the Captain’s means were so small as to be, it may be 
said, quite invisible. But nobody knows how the wind is tem- 
pered to shorn Irish lambs, and in what marvellous places they 
find pasture. If Captain Costigan, whom I had the honor to 
know, would but have told his history, it would have been a great 
moral story. But he neither would have told it if he could, nor 
could if he would ; for the Captain was not only unaccustomed 
to tell the truth — he was unable even to think it — and fact and 
fiction reeled together in his muzzy, whiskified brain. 

He began life rather brilliantly with a pair of colors, a fine 
person and legs, and one of the most beautiful voices in the 
world. To his latest day he sang with admirable pathos and 
humor those wonderful Irish ballads which are so mirthful and 
so melancholy : and was always the first himself to cry at their 
pathos. Poor Cos ! he was at once brave and maudlin, humor- 
ous* and an idiot ; always good-natured, and sometimes almost 
trustworthy. Up to the last day of his life he would drink with 
any man, and back any man’s bill : and his end was in a 
sponging-house, where the sheriff’s officer, who took him, was 
fond of him. 

In his brief morning of life, Cos formed the delight of regi- 
mental messes, and had the honor of singing his songs, baccha- 
nalian and sentimental, at the tables of the most illustrious 
generals and commanders-in-chief, in the course of which period 
he drank three times as much claret as was good for him, and 
spent his doubtful patrimony. What became of him subse- 


EENDENNIS. 


53 

quently to his retirement from the army, is no affair of ours. I 
take it, no foreigner understands the life of an Irish gentleman 
without money, the way in which he manages to keep afloat — 
the wind-raising conspiracies in which he engages with heroes 
as unfortunate as himself — the means by which he contrives, 
during most days of the week, to get his portion of whiskey-and- 
water : all these are mysteries to us inconceivable : but suffice 
it to say, that through all the storms of life Jack had floated 
somehow, and the lamp of his nose had never gone out. 

Before he and Pen had had a half hour’s conversation, the 
Captain managed to extract a couple of sovereigns from the 
young gentleman for tickets for his daughter’s benefit, which 
was to take place speedily ; and was not a bona fide transaction 
such as that of the last year, when poor Miss Fotheringay had 
lost fifteen shillings by her venture ; but was an arrangement 
with the manager, by which the lady was to have the sale of a 
certain number of tickets, keeping for herself a large portion 
of the sum for which they were sold. 

Pen had but two pounds in his purse, and he handed them 
over to the Captain for the tickets ; he would have been afraid 
to offer more lest he should offend the latter’s delicacy. Cos- 
tigan scrawled him an order for a box, lightly slipped the sover- 
eigns into his waistcoat, and slapped his hand' over the place 
where they lay. They seemed to warm his old sides. 

“ Faith, sir,” said he, “ the bullion’s scarcer with me than 
it used to be, as is the case with many a good fellow. I won 
six hundtherd of ’em in a single night, sir, when me kind friend, 
His Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, was in Gibralther.” 

Then it was good to see the Captain’s behavior at break- 
fast, before the devilled turkey and the mutton-chops ! His 
stories poured forth unceasingly, and his spirits rose as he 
chatted to the young men. When he got a bit of sunshine, the 
old lazzarone basked in it ; he prated about his own affairs and 
past splendor, and all the lords, generals, and Lord-Lieuten- 
ants he had ever known. He described the death of his darling 
Bessie, the late Mrs. Costigan, and the challenge he had sent 
to Captain Shanty Clancy, of the Slashers, for looking rude at 
Miss Fotheringay as she was on her kyar in the Phaynix ; and 
then he described how the Captain apologized, gave a dinner 
at the Kildare Street, where six of them drank twinty-one 
bottles of claret, & c. He announced that to sit with two such 
noble and generous young fellows was the happiness and pride 
of an old soldier’s existence ; and having had a second glass of 
Cura^oa, was so happy that he began to cry. Altogether we 


PENDENNIS . 


54 

should say that the Captain was not a man of much strength of 
mind, or a very eligible companion for youth ; but there are 
worse men, holding much better places in life, and more dis- 
honest, who have never committed half so many rogueries as 
he. They walked out, the Captain holding an arm of each of 
his dear young friends, and in a maudlin state of contentment. 
He winked at one or two tradesmen’s shops where, possibly, 
he owed a bill, as much as to say “ See the company I’m in — 
sure I’ll pay you, my boy,” — and they parted finally with Mr. 
Foker at a billiard-room, where the latter had a particular 
engagement with some gentlemen of Colonel Swallowtail’s 
regiment. 

Pen and the shabby Captain still walked the street together ; 
the Captain, in his sly way, making inquiries about Mr. Foker’s 
fortune and station in life. Pen told him how Foker’s father 
was a celebrated brewer, and his mother was Lady Agnes 
Milton, Lord Rosherville’s daughter. The Captain broke out 
into a strain of exaggerated compliment and panegyric about 
Mr. Foker, whose “ native aristocracie,” he said, “ could be seen 
with the twinkling of an oi — and only served to adawrun other 
qualities which he possessed, a foin intellect and a generous 
heart.” 

Pen walked on, listening to his companion’s prate, wonder- 
ing, amused, and puzzled. It had not as yet entered into the 
boy’s head to disbelieve any statement that was made to him ; 
and being of a candid nature himself, he took naturally for 
truth what other people told him. Costigan had never had a 
better listener, and was highly flattered by the attentiveness 
and modest bearing of the young man. 

So much pleased was he with the young gentleman, so art- 
less, honest, and cheerful did Pen seem to be, that the Captain 
finally made him an invitation, which he very seldom accorded 
to young men, and asked Pen if he would do him the fevor to 
enter his humble abode, which was near at hand, where the 
Captain would have the honor of inthrojuicing his young friend 
to his daughter, Miss Fotheringay? 

Pen was so delightfully shocked at this invitation, that he 
thought he should have dropped from the Captain’s arms at 
first, and trembled lest the other should discover his emotion. 
He gasped out a few incoherent words, indicative of the high 
gratification he should have in being presented to the lady for 
whose — for whose talents he had conceived such an admira- 
tion — such an extreme admiratibn ; and followed the Captain, 
scarcely knowing whither that gentleman led him. He was 


PENDENNIS. 


55 

going to see her ! He was going to see her ! In her was the 
centre of the universe. She was the kernel of the world for 
Pen. Yesterday, before he knew her, seemed a period ever so 
long ago — a revolution was between him and that time, and a 
new world about to begin. 

The Captain conducted his young friend to that quiet little 
street in Chatteris, called Prior’s Lane, which lies close by 
Dean’s Green and the canons’ houses, and is overlooked by 
the enormous towers of the cathedral ; there the Captain 
dwelt modestly in the first floor of a low gabled house, on the 
door of which was the brass plate of “ Creed, Tailor and Robe- 
maker.” Creed was dead, however. His widow was a pew- 
opener in the cathedral hard by ; his eldest son was a little 
scamp of a choir-boy, who played toss-halfpenny, led his little 
brothers into mischief, and had a voice as sweet as an angel. 
A couple of the latter were sitting on the door-step, and they 
jumped up with great alacrity to meet their lodger, and plunged 
wildly, and rather to Pen’s surprise, at the swallow-tails of the 
Captain’s dress-coat ; for the truth is, that the good-natured 
gentleman, when he was in cash, generally brought home an 
apple, or a piece of gingerbread for these children. “ Whereby 
the widdy never pressed me for rint when not convanient, as 
he remarked afterwards to Pen, winking knowingly, and laying 
a finger on his nose. 

As Pen followed his companion up the creaking old stair, 
his knees trembled under him. He could hardly see when he 
entered, following the Captain, and stood in the room — in her 
room. He saw something black before him, and waving as if 
making a curtsey, and heard, but quite indistinctly, Costigan 
making a speech over him, in which the Captain, with his usual 
magniloquence, expressed to “ me child ” his wish to make her 
known to “ his dear and admirable young friend, Mr. Awther 
Pindinnis, a young gentleman of property in the neighborhood, 
a person of refoined moind, and emiable manners, a sinsare 
lover of poethry, and a man possest of a feeling and affec- 
tionate heart.” 

“ It is very fine weather,” Miss Fotheringay said, in an 
Irish accent, and with a deep rich melancholy voice. 

“ Very,” said Mr. Pendennis. In this romantic way their 
conversation began ; and he found himself seated on a chair, 
and having leisure to look at the young lady. 

She looked still handsomer off the stage than before the 
lamps. All her attitudes were naturally grand and majestical. 
If she went and stood up against the mantel-piece her robe 


PENDENNIS. 


56 

draped itself classically round her ; her chin supported itself 
on her hand, the other lines of her form arranged themselves 
in full harmonious undulations — she looked like a muse in con- 
templation. If she sat down on a cane-bottomed chair, her 
arm rounded itself over the back of the seat, her hand seemed 
as if it ought to have a sceptre put into it, the folds of her dress 
fell naturally round her in order : all her movements were 
graceful and imperial. In the morning you could see her hair 
was blue-black, her complexion of dazzling fairness, with the 
faintest possible blush flickering, as it were, in her cheek. Her 
eyes were gray, with prodigious long lashes ; and as for her 
mouth, Mr. Pendennis has given me subsequently to under- 
stand, that it was of a staring red color, with which the most 
brilliant geranium, sealing-wax, or Guardsman’s coat, could 
not vie. 

“ And very warm,” continued this empress and Queen of 
Sheba. 

Mr. Pen again assented, and the conversation rolled on in 
this manner. She asked Costigan whether he had had a pleas- 
ant evening at the George, and he recounted the supper and 
the tumblers of punch. Then the father asked her how she 
had been employing the morning. 

“ Bows came,” said she, “ at ten, and we studied Ophalia. 
It’s for the twenty-fourth, when I hope, sir, we shall have the 
honor of seeing ye.” 

“ Indeed, indeed, you will,” Mr. Pendennis cried ; wonder- 
ing that she could say “ Ophalia,” and speak with an Irish in- 
flection of voice naturally, who had not the least Hibernian 
accent on the stage. 

“ I’ve secured ’um for your benefit, dear,” said the Captain, 
tapping his waistcoat pocket, wherein* lay Pen’s sovereigns, and 
winking at Pen, with one eye, at which the boy blushed. 

“ Mr. the gentleman's very obleeging,” said Mrs. Haller. 

“ My name is Pendennis,” said Pen, blushing. “ I — I — 
hdpe you’ll — you’ll remember it.” His heart thumped so as he 
made this audacious declaration, that he almost choked in 
uttering it. 

“ Pendennis ” — she answered slowly, and looking him full 
in the eyes, with a glance so straight, so clear, so bright, so 
killing, with a voice so sweet, so round, so low, that the word 
and the glance shot Pen through and through, and perfectly 
transfixed him with pleasure. 

“ I never knew the name was so pretty before,” Pen said. 

“ ’Tis a very pretty name,” Ophelia said. “ Pentweazle’s 


PZNDENNIS. 


57 


not a pretty name. Remember, papa, when we were on the 
Norwich Circuit, Young Pentweazle, who used to play second 
old man, and married Miss Raney, the Columbine ; they’re 
both engaged in London now, at the Queen’s, and get five 
pounds a week. Pentweazle wasn’t his real name. ’Twas 
Judkin gave it him, I don’t know why. His name was Har- 
rington ; that is, his real name was Potts ; fawther a clergy- 
man, very respectable. Harrington was in London, and got in 
debt. Ye remember, he came out in Falkland, to Mrs. Bunce’s 
Julia.” 

“ And a pretty Julia she was,” the Captain interposed ; “ a 
woman of fifty, and a mother of ten children. ’Tis you who 
ought to have been Julia, or my name’s not Jack Costigan.” 

“ I didn’t take the leading business then,” Miss Fotheringay 
said modestly ; “ I wasn’t fit for’t till Bows taught me.” 

“ True for you, my dear,” said the Captain : and bending to 
Pendennis, he added, ‘ Rejuiced in circumstances, sir, I was 
for some time a fencing-master in Dublin ; (there’s only three 
men in the empire could touch me with the foil once, but Jack 
Costigan’s getting old and stiff now, sir,) and my daughter had an 
engagement at the thayater there ; and ’twa-s there that my 
friend, Mr. Bows, gave her lessons, and made her what ye see. 
What have ye done since Bows went, Emily ? ” 

“ Sure, I’ve made a pie,” Emily said, with perfect sim- 
plicity. She pronounced it “ Poy.” 

“ If ye’ll try it at four o’clock, sir, say the word,” said 
Costigan gallantly. “ That girl, sir, makes the best veal and 
ham pie in England, and I think I can promise ye a glass of 
punch of the right flavor.” 

Pen had promised to be home to dinner at six o’clock, but 
the rascal thought he couM accommodate pleasure and duty in 
this point, and was only too eager to accept this invitation. He 
looked on with delight and wonder whilst Ophelia busied her- 
self about the room, and prepared for the dinner. She arranged 
the glasses, and laid and . smoothed the little cloth, all which 
duties she performed with a quiet grace and good-humor, which 
enchanted her guest more and more. The “ poy ” arrived from 
the baker’s in the hands of one of the little choir-boy’s brothers 
at the proper hour : and at four o’clock, Pen found himself at 
dinner — actually at dinner with the handsomest woman in all 
creation — with his first and only love, whom he had adored ever 
since when ? — ever since yesterday, ever since forever. He 
ate a crust of her making, he poured her out a glass of beer, he 
saw her drink a glass of punch — just one wineglassful — out 


PEND ENNIS. 


5 * 

of the tumbler which she mixed for her papa. She was per* 
fectly good-natured, and offered. to mix one for Pendennis too. 
It was prodigiously strong ; Pen had never in his life drunk so 
much spirits and water. Was it the punch, or the punch-maker 
who intoxicated him ? 

Pen tried to engage her in conversation about poetry and 
about her profession. He asked her what she thought of 
Ophelia’s madness, and whether she was in love with Hamlet 
or not ? “ In love with such a little ojus wretch as that stunted 

manager of a Bingley ? ” She bristled with indignation at the 
thought. Pen explained it was not of her he spoke, but of 
Ophelia of the play. “ Oh, indeed ; if no offence was meant, 
none was taken : but as for Bingley, indeed, she did not value 
him — not that glass of punch.” Pen next tried her on Kotzebue. 
“ Kotzebue ? who was he ? ” — “ The author of the play in which 
she had been performing so admirably.” “ She did not know 
that — the man’s name at the beginning of the book was Thomp- 
son,” she said. Pen laughed at her adorable simplicity. He 
told her of the melancholy fate of the author of the play, and 
how Sand had killed him. It was the first time in her life that 
Miss Costigan had ever heard of Mr. Kotzebue’s existence, but 
she looked as if she was very much interested, and her sym- 
pathy sufficed for honest Pen. 

And in the midst of this simple conversation, the hour and a 
quarter which poor Pen could afford to allow himself, passed 
away only too quickly ; and he had taken leave, he was gone, 
and away on his rapid road homewards on the back of Rebecca. 
She was called upon to show her mettle in the three journeys 
which she made that day. 

“ What was that he was talking about, the madness of Ham- 
let, and the theory of the great German critic on the subject ? ” 
Emily asked of her father. 

“ ’Deed then I don’t know, Milly dear,” answered the Cap- 
tain. “ We’ll ask Bows when he comes.” 

“ Anyhow, he’s a nice, fair-spoken pretty young man,” the 
lady said : “ how many tickets did he take of you ? ” 

“ Faith, then, he took six, and gev me two guineas, Milly,” 
the Captain said. “ I suppose them young chaps is not too 
flush of coin.” 

: “ He’s full of book-learning,” Miss Fotheringay continued. 
“ Kotzebue ! He, he, what a droll name indeed, now ; and the 
poor fellow killed by Sand, too ! Did ye ever hear such a thing ? 
I’ll ask Bows about it, papa dear.” 

“ A queer death, sure enough,” ejaculated the Captain, and 


PENDENNIS. 


59 


changed the painful theme. “ ’Tis an elegant mare the young 
gentleman rides,” Costigan went on to say ; “ and a grand 
breakfast, intirely, that young Mister Foker gave us.” 

“ He’s good for two private boxes, and at least twenty 
tickets, I should say,” cried the daughter, a prudent lass, who 
always kept her fine eyes on the main chance. 

“ I’ll go bail of that,” answered the Papa : and so their con- 
versation continued awhile, until the tumbler of punch was 
finished ; and their hour of departure soon came, too ; for at 
half-past six Miss Fotheringay was to appear at the theatre 
again, whither her father always accompanied her ; and stood, 
as we have seen, in the side-scene watching her, and drank 
spirits-and-water in the green-room with the company there. 

“ How beautiful she is,” thought Pen, cantering homewards. 
“ How simple and how tender ! How charming it is to see a 
woman of her genius busying herself with the humble offices of 
domestic life, cooking dishes to make her old father comfort- 
able, and brewing him drink ! How rude it was of me to begin 
to talk about professional matters, and how well she turned the 
conversation ! By-tne-way, she talked about professional mat- 
ters herself ; but then with what fun and humor she told the 
story of her comrade, Pentweazle, as he was called ! There is 
no humor like Irish humor. Her father is rather tedious, but 
thoroughly amiable ; and how fine of him, giving lessons in 
fencing after he quitted the army, where he was the pet of the 
Duke of Kent ! Fencing ! I should like to continue my fenc- 
ing, or I shall forget what Angelo taught me. Uncle Arthur 
always liked me to fence — he says it is the exercise of a 
gentleman. Hang it. I’ll take some lessons of Captain Cos- 
tigan. Go along, Rebecca — up the hill, old lady. Pendennis, 
Pendennis — how she spoke the word ! Emily, Emily ! how 
good, how noble, how beautiful, how perfect, she is ! ” 

Now the reader, who has had the benefit of overhearing the 
entire conversation which Pen had with Miss Fotheringay, can 
judge for himself about the powers of her mind, and may per- 
haps be disposed to think that she has not said anything aston- 
ishingly humorous or intellectual in the course of the above in- 
terview. 

But what did our Pen care ? He saw a pair of bright eyes, 
and he believed in them — a beautiful image, and he fell down 
and worshipped it. He supplied the meaning which her words 
wanted ; and created the divinity which he loved. Was Titania 
the first who fell in love with an ass, or Pygmalion the only ar- 
tist who has gone crazy about a stone ? He had found her ; he 


6o 


PENDENNIS. 


had found what his soul thirsted after. He flung himself into 
the stream and drank with all his might. Let those who have 
been thirsty own how delicious that first draught is. As he 
rode down the avenue towards home— Pen shrieked with 
laughter as he saw the Reverend Mr. Smirke once more coming 
demurely away from Fairoaks on his pony. Smirke had dawdled 
and stayed at the cottages on the way, and then dawdled with 
Laura over her lessons — and then looked at Mrs. Pendennis's 
gardens and improvements until he had perfectly bored out that 
lady : and he had taken his leave at the very last minute with- 
out that invitation to dinner which he fondly expected. 

Pen was full of kindness and triumph. “ What, picked up 
and sound ? ” he cried out laughing. “ Come along back, old 
fellow, and eat my dinner — I have had mine : but we will have 
a bottle of the old wine and drink her health, Smirke.” 

Poor Smirke turned the pony’s head round, and jogged along 
with Arthur. His mother was charmed to see him in such high 
spirits, and welcomed Mr. Smirke for his sake, when Arthur 
said he had forced the curate back to dine. He gave a most 
ludicrous account of the play of the night before, and of the 
acting of Bingley the Manager, in his ricketty Hessians, and 
the enormous Mrs. Bingley as the Countess, in rumpled green 
satin and a Polish cap : he mimicked them, and delighted his 
mother and little Laura, who clapped her hands with pleasure. 

“ And Mrs. Haller ? ” said Mrs. Pendennis. 

“She’s a stunner, ma’am,” Pen said, laughing, and using the 
words of his revered friend, Mr. Foker. 

“ A what , Arthur ? ” asked the lady. 

“ What is a stunner, Arthur ? ” cried Laura, in the same 
voice. 

So he gave them a queer account of Mr. Foker, and how he 
used to be called Vats and Grains, and by other contumelious 
names at school : and how he was now exceedingly rich, and a 
Fellow Commoner at St. Boniface. But gay and communicative 
as he was, Mr. Pen did not say one syllable about his ride to 
Chatteris that day, or about the new friends whom he had made 
there. 

When the two ladies retired, Pen, with flashing eyes, filled 
up two great bumpers of Madeira, and looking Smirke full in 
the face said, “ Here’s to her ! ” 

“ Here’s to her,” said the curate with a sigh, lifting the glass : 
and emptying it, so that his face was a little pink when he put 
it down. 

Pen had even less sleep that night than on the night before. 


PENDENNIS. 


61 

In the morning, and almost before dawn, he went out and 
saddled that unfortunate Rebecca himself, and rode her on the 
Downs like mad. Again Love had roused him — and said, 
“ Awake Pendennis, I am here.” That charming fever — that 
delicious longing — and fire, and uncertainty ; he hugged them 
to him — he would not have lost them for all the world. 


CHAPTER VI. 

CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND WAR. 

Cicero and Euripides did not occupy Mr. Pen much for 
some time after this, and honest Mr. Smirke had a very easy 
time with his pupil. Rebecca was the animal who suffered 
most in the present state of Pen’s mind, for, besides those days 
when he could publicly announce his intention of going to 
Chatteris to take a fencing-lesson, and went thither with the 
knowledge of his mother, whenever he saw three hours clear 
before him, the young rascal made a rush for the City, and found 
his way to Prior’s Lane. He was as frantic with vexation when 
Rebecca went lame, as Richard at Bosworth, when his horse 
was killed under him : and got deeply into the books of the 
man who kept the hunting stables at Chatteris for the doctoring 
of his own, and the hire of another animal. 

Then, and perhaps once in a week, under pretence of going 
to read a Greek play with Smirke, this young reprobate set off 
so as to be in time for the Competitor down coach, stayed a 
couple of hours in Chatteris, and returned on the Rival, which 
left for London at ten at night. Once his secret was nearly 
lost by Smirke’s simplicity, of whom Mrs. Pendennis asked 
whether they had read a great deal the night before, or a ques- 
tion to that effect. Smirke was about to tell the truth, that he 
had never seen Mr. Pen at all, when the latter’s boot-heel came 
grinding down on Mr. Smirke’s toe under the table, and warned 
the curate not to betray him. 

They had had conversations on the tender subject of course. 
There must be a confidant and depositary somewhere. When 
informed, under the most solemn vows of secrecy, of Pen’s con- 
dition of mind, the curate said, with no small tremor, “ that he 
hoped it was no unworthy object — no unlawful attachment, 
which Pen had formed ” — forif so, the poor fellow felt it would 


62 


PENDENNIS. 


be his duty to break his vow and inform Pen’s mother, and then 
there would be a quarrel, he felt, with sickening apprehension, 
and he would never again have a chance of seeing what he most 
liked in the world. 

“Unlawful, unworthy!” Pen bounced out at the curate’s 
question. “ She is as pure as she is beautiful ; I would give 
my heart to no other woman. I keep the matter a secret in my 
family, because — because — there are reasons of a weighty nature 
which I am not at liberty to disclose. But any man who 
breathes a word against her purity insults both her honor and 
mine, and — and dammy, I won’t stand it.” 

Smirke, with a faint laugh, only said, “ Well, well, don’t 
call me out, Arthur, for you know I can’t fight : ” but by this 
compromise the wretched curate was put more than ever in the 
power of his pupil, and the Greek and mathematics suffered 
correspondingly. 

If the reverend gentleman had had much discernment, and 
looked into the Poet’s corner of the County Chronicle as it 
arrived in the Wednesday’s bag, he might have seen “ Mrs. 
Haller.” “ Passion and Genius,” “ Lines to Miss Fotheringay, 
of the Theatre Royal,” appearing every week ; and other verses 
of the most gloomy, thrilling, and passionate cast. But as 
these poems were no longer signed NEP by their artful com- 
poser, but subscribed EROS ; neither the tutor nor Helen, the 
good soul, who cut all her son’s verses out of the paper, knew 
that Nep was no other than that flaming Eros, who sang so 
vehemently the charms of the new actress. 

“ Who is the lady,” at last asked Mrs. Pendennis, “ whom 
your rival is always singing in the County Chronicle. He 
writes something like you, dear Pen, but yours is much the best. 
Have you seen Miss Fotheringay ? ” 

Pen said jjes, he had ; that night he went to see the 
“ Stranger,” she acted Mrs. Haller. By the way she was go- 
ing to have a benefit, and was to appear in Ophelia — suppose 
we were to go — Shakspeare you know, mother — we can get 
horses from the Clavering Arms. Little Laura sprang up with 
delight, she longed for a play. 

Pen introduced “ Shakspeare you know,” because the de- 
ceased Pendennis, as became a man of his character, professed 
an uncommon respect for the bard of Avon, in whose works he 
safely said there was more poetry than in all “ Johnson’s Poets ” 
put together. And though Mr. Pendennis did not much read 
the works in question, yet he enjoined Pen to peruse them, and 
often said what pleasure he should have, when the boy was of 


PENDENNIS. 63 

a proper age, in taking him and mother to see some good plays 
of the immortal poet. 

The ready tears welled up in the kind mother’s eyes as she 
remembered these speeches of the man who was gone. She 
kissed her son fondly, and said she would go. Laura jumped for 
joy. Was Pen happy ? — was he ashamed ? As he held his 
mother to him, he longed to tell her all, but he kept his counsel. 
He would see how his mother liked her; the play should be the 
thing, and he would try his mother like Hamlet’s. 

Helen in her good-humor, asked Mr. Smirke to be of the 
party. That ecclesiastic had been bred up by a* fond parent at 
Clapham, who had an objection to dramatic entertainments, 
and he had never yet seen a play. But, Shakspeare ! — but to 
go with Mrs. Pendennis in her carriage, and sit a whole night 
by her side ! — he could not resist the idea of so much pleasure, 
and made a feeble speech, in which he spoke of temptation and 
gratitude, and finally accepted Mrs. Pendennis’s most kind 
offer. As he spoke he gave her a look, which made her exceed- 
ingly uncomfortable. She had seen that look more than once, 
of late, pursuing her. He became more positively odious every 
day in the widow’s eyes. 

We are not going to say a great deal about Pen’s courtship 
of Mrs. Fotheringay, for the reader has already had a specimen 
of her conversation, much of which need surely not be reported. 
Pen sat with her hour after hour, and poured forth his honest 
boyish soul to her. Everything he knew, or hoped, or felt, or 
had read, or fancied, he told her. He never tired of talking 
and longing. One after another, as his thoughts rose in his 
hot eager brain, he clothed them in words, and told them to 
her. Her part of the tete-a-tete was not to talk, but to appear 
as if she understood what Pen talked, and to look exceedingly 
handsome and sympathizing. The fact is, whilst he was making 
one of his tirades^ the lovely Emily, who could not comprehend 
a tenth part of his talk, had leisure to think about her own 
affairs, and would arrange in her own mind how they should 
dress the cold mutton, or how she would turn the black satin, 
or make herself out of her scarf a bonnet like Miss Thack- 
th waite’s new one, and so forth. Pen spouted Byron and Moore ; 
passion and poetry : her business was to throw up her eyes, or 
fixing them for a moment on his face, to cry, “ Oh, ’tis beauti- 
ful ! Ah, how exquisite ! Repeat those lines again.” And off 
the boy went, and she returned to her own simple thoughts 
about the turned gown, or the hashed mutton. 


64 


PENDENNIS. 


In fact Pen’s passion was not long a secret from the lovely 
Emily or her father. Upon his second visit, his admiration was 
quite evident to both of them, and on his departure the old 
gentleman said to his daughter, as he winked at her over his 
glass of grog, “ Faith, Milly darling, I think ye’ve hooked that 
chap.” 

“ Pooh, ’tis only a boy, papa dear,” Milly remarked. “ Sure 
he’s but a child.” 

“ Ye’ve hooked ’urn any how,” said the Captain, “ and let 
me tell ye he’s not a bad fish. I asked Tom at the George, 
and Flint, the grocer, where his mother dales — find fortune — 
drives in her chariot — splendid park and grounds — Fairoaks 
Park— only son — property all his own at twenty-one — ye might 
go further and not fare so well, Miss Fotheringay.” 

“ Them boys are mostly talk,” said Milly, seriously. “ Ye 
know at Dublin how ye went on about young Poldoodv, and I’ve 
a whole desk full of verses he wrote me when he was in Trinity 
College ; but he went abroad, and his mother married him to 
an Englishwoman.” 

“ Lord Poldoody was a young nobleman ; and in them its 
natural : and ye weren’t in the position in which ye are now, 
Milly dear. But ye musn’t encourage this young chap too much 
for, bedad, Jack Costigan won’t have any trifling with his 
daughter.” 

“No more will his daughter, papa, you maybe sure of that,” 
Milly said.^“ A little sip more of the punch, — sure, ’tis beau- 
tiful. Ye needn’t be afraid about the young chap — I think I’m 
old enough to take care of myself, Captain Costigan.” 

So Pen used to come day after day, rushing in and galloping 
away, and growing more wild about the girl with every visit. 
Sometimes the Captain was present at their meetings ; but hav- 
ing a perfect confidence in his daughter, he was more often in- 
clined to leave the young couple to themselves, and cocked his 
hat over his eye, and strutted off on some errand when Pen 
entered. How delightful those interviews were ! The Cap- 
tain’s drawing-room was a low wainscoted room, with a large 
window looking into the Dean’s garden. There Pen sat and 
talked — and talked to Emily, looking beautiful as she sat at 
her work — looking beautiful and calm, and the sunshine came 
streaming in at the great windows, and lighted up her superb 
face and form. In the midst of the conversation, the great 
bell would begin to boom, and, he would pause smiling, and be 
silent until the sound of the vast music died away — or the rooks 
in the cathedral elms would make a great noise towards sunset 


PENDENNIS. 65 

— or the sound of the organ and the choristers would come 
over the quiet air, and gently hush Pen’s talking. 

By the way, it must be said, that Miss Fotheringay, in a 
plain shawl and a close bonnet and veil, went to church every 
Sunday of her life, accompanied by her indefatigable father, 
who gave the responses in a very rich and fine brogue, joined 
in the psalms and chanting, and behaved in the most exemplary 
manner. 

Little Bows, the house-friend of the family, was exceedingly 
wroth at the notion of Miss Fotheringay’s marriage with a 
stripling seven or eight years her junior. Bows, who was a 
cripple, and owned that he was a little more deformed even 
than Bingley the manager, so that he could not appear on the 
stage, was a singular wild man of no small talents and humor. 
Attracted first by Miss Fotheringay’s beauty, he began to teach 
her how to act. He shrieked out in his cracked voice the 
parts, and his pupil learned them from his lips by rote, and 
repeated them in her full rich tones. He indicated the at- 
titudes, and set and moved those beautiful arms of hers. Those 
who remember this grand actress on the stage can recall how 
she used always precisely the same gestures, looks, and 
tones ; how she stood on the same plank of the stage in the 
same position, rolled her eyes at the same instant and to the 
same degree and wept with precisely the same heartrending 
pathos and over the same pathetic syllable. And after she 
had come out trembling with emotion before the audience, and 
looking so exhausted and tearful that you fancied she would 
faint with sensibility, she would gather up her hair the instant 
she was behind the curtain, and go home to a mutton-chop and 
a glass of brown stout ; and the harrowing labors of the day 
over, she went to bed and snored as resolutely and as regularly 
as a porter. 

Bows then was indignant at the notion that his pupil should 
throw her chances away in life by bestowing her hand upon a 
little country squire. As soon as a London manager saw her 
he prophesied that she would get a London engagement, and a 
great success. The misfortune was that the London managers 
had seen her. She had played in London three years before, 
and had failed from utter stupidity. Since then it was that 
Bows had taken her in hand and taught her part after part. 
How he worked and screamed, and twisted, and repeated lines 
over and over again, and with what indomitable patience and 
dulness she followed him ! She knew that he made her : and 
let herself be made. She was not grateful, or ungrateful, or 

5 


66 


PENDENNIS. 


unkind, or ill-humored. She was only stupid ; and Pen was 
madly in love with her. 

The post-horses from the Clavering Arms arrived in due 
time, and carried the party to the theatre at Chatteris, where 
Pen was gratified in perceiving that a tolerably large audience 
was assembled. The young gentleman from Baymouth had a 
box, in the front of which sat Mr. Foker and his friend Mr. 
Spavin splendidly attired in the most full-blown evening cos- 
tume. They saluted Pen in a cordial manner, and examined 
his party, of which they approved, for little Laura was a pretty 
little red-cheeked girl with a quantity of shining brown ringlets, 
and Mrs. Pendennis dressed in black velvet with the diamond 
cross which she sported on great occasions, looked uncommonly 
handsome and majestic. Behind these sat Mr. Arthur, and 
the gentle Smirke with the curl reposing on his fair forehead, 
his white tie in perfect order. He blushed to find himself in 
such a place — but how happy was he to be there. He and 
Mrs. Pendennis brought books of “ Hamlet ” with them to 
follow the tragedy, as is the custom of honest country-folks 
who go to a play in state. Samuel, coachman, groom, and 
gardener to Mrs. Pendennis, took his place in the pit, where 
Mr. Foker’s man was also visible. It was dotted with non- 
commissioned officers of the Dragoons, whose band, by kind 
permission of Colonel Swallowtail, were, as usual, in the 
orchestra ; and that corpulent and distinguished warrior him- 
self, with his Waterloo medal and a number of his young men, 
made a handsome show in the boxes. 

“ Who is that odd-looking person bowing to you, Arthur ? ” 
Mrs. Pendennis asked of her son. 

Pen blushed a great deal. “ His name is Captain Costigan, 
ma’am,” he said, “ a Peninsular officer.” In fact it was the 
Captain in a new shoot of clothes, as he called them, and with 
a large pair of white kid gloves, one of which he waved to Pen- 
dennis, whilst he laid the other sprawling over his heart and 
coat-buttons. Pen did not say any more. And how was Mrs. 
Pendennis to know that Mr. Costigan was the father of Miss 
Fotheringay? 

Mr. Hornbull, from London, was the Hamlet of the night, 
Mr. Bingley modestly contenting himself with the part of Ho- 
ratio, and reserving his chief strength for William in “ Black- 
Eyed Susan,” which was the second piece. 

We have nothing to do with the play : except to say, that 
Ophelia looked lovely, and performed with admirable wild 
pathos ; laughing, weeping, gazing wildly, waving her beautiful 


PENDENNIS. 


67 

white arms, and flinging about her snatches ot flowers and 
songs with the most charming madness. What an opportunity 
her splendid black hair had of tossing over her shoulders ! 
She made the most charming corpse ever seen; and while 
Hamlet and Laertes were battling in her grave, she was look- 
ing out from the back scenes with some curiosity towards Pen’s 
box, and the family party assembled in it. 

There was but one voice in her praise there. Mrs. Pen- 
dennis was in ecstasies with her beauty. Little Laura was 
bewildered by the piece, and the Ghost, and the play within 
the play (during which, as Hamlet lay at Ophelia’s knee, Pen 
felt that he would like to strangle Mr. Hornbull), but cried out 
great praises of that beautiful young creature. Pen was 
charmed with the effect which she produced on his mother 
— and the clergyman, for his part, was exceedingly enthu- 
siastic. * 

When the curtain fell upon that group of slaughtered per- 
sonages, who are dispatched so suddenly at the end of “ Ham- 
let,” and whose demise astonished poor little Laura not a little, 
there was an immense shouting and applause from all quarters 
of the house ; the intrepid Smirke, violently excited, clapped 
his hands, and cried out “ Bravo, Bravo,” as loud as the 
Dragoon officers themselves. These were greatly moved, — 
Us s’ agit aient sur leurs bancs , — to borrow a phrase from our 
neighbors. They were led cheering into action by the portly 
Swallowtail, who waved his cap — the non-commissioned officers 
in the pit, of course, gallantly following their chiefs. There 
was a roar of bravos rang through the house ; Pen bellowing 
with the loudest. “ Fotheringay ! Fotheringay ! ” Messrs. 
Spavin and Foker giving the view halloo from their box. Even 
Mrs. Pendennis began to wave about her pocket-handkerchief, 
and little Laura danced, laughed, clapped, and looked up at 
Pen with wonder. 

Hornbull led the beneficiaire forward, amidst bursts of enthu- 
siasm — and she looked so handsome and radiant, with her hair 
still over her shoulders, that Pen hardly could contain himself 
for rapture : and he leaned over his mother’s chair, and shouted, 
and hurrayed, and waved his hat. It was all he could do to 
keep his secret from Helen, and not say, “ Look ! That’s the 
woman ! Isn’t she peerless ? I tell you I love her.” But he 
disguised these feelings under an enormous bellowing and 
hurraying. 

As for Miss Fotheringay and her behavior, the reader is 
referred to a former page for an account of that. She went 


68 


PENDENNIS. 


through precisely the same business. She surveyed the house 
all round with glances of gratitude ; and trembled, and almost 
sank with emotion, over her favorite trap-door. She seized the 
flowers (Foker discharged a prodigious bouquet at her, and 
even Smirke made a feeble shy with a rose, and blushed dread- 
fully when it fell into the pit) — she seized the flowers and 
pressed them to her swelling heart — &c., &c. — in a word — we 
refer the reader to. page 42. Twinkling in her breast poor old 
Pen saw a locket which he had bought of Mr. Nathan in High 
Street, with the last shilling he was worth, and a sovereign bor- 
rowed from Smirke. 

“ Black-Eyed Susan ” followed, at which sweet story our 
gentle-hearted friends were exceedingly charmed and affected : 
and in which Susan, with a russet gown and a pink ribbon in 
her cap, looked to the full as lovely as Ophelia. Bingley was 
great in William. Goll, as the admiral, looked like the figure- 
head of a seventy-four ; and Garbetts, as Captain Boldweather, 
a miscreant who forms a plan for carrying off Black-Eyed Susan, 
and waving an immense cocked hat, says, “ Come what may, 
he will be the ruin of her ” — all these performed their parts 
with their accustomed talent ; and it was. with a sincere regret 
that all our friends saw the curtain drop down and end that 
pretty and tender story. 

If Pen had been alone with his mother in the carriage as 
they went home, he would have told her all that night ; but he 
sat on the box in the moonshine smoking a cigar by the side 
of Smirke, who warmed himself with a comforter. Mr. Foker’s 
tandem and lamps whirled by the sober old Clavering posters, 
as they were a couple of miles on their road home, and Mr. 
Spavin saluted Mrs. Pendennis’s carriage with some consider- 
able variations of Rule Britannia on the key-bugle. 

It happened two days after the above gayeties that the Dean 
of Chatteris entertained a few select clerical friends at dinner 
at his Deanery House. That they drank uncommonly good 
port-wine, and abused the Bishop over their dessert, are very 
likely matters : but with such we have nothing at present to do. 
Our friend Doctor Portman, of Clavering, was one of the Dean’s 
guests, and being a gallant man, and seeing from his place at 
the mahogany, the Dean’s lady walking up and down the grass, 
with her children sporting around her, and her pink parasol 
over her lovely head — the Doctor stept out of the French 
windows of the dining-room into the lawn, which skirts that 
apartment and left the other white neck-cloths to gird at my 


PENDENNIS. 


69 

lord Bishop. Then the Doctor went up and offered Mrs. Dean 
his arm, and they sauntered over the ancient velvet lawn, which 
had been mowed and rolled for immemorial Deans, in that 
easy, quiet, comfortable manner, in which people of middle age 
and good temper walk after a good dinner, in a calm golden 
summer evening, when the sun has but just sunk behind the 
enormous cathedral towers, and the sickle-shaped moon is 
growing every moment brighter in the heavens. 

Now at the end of the Dean’s garden, there is, as we have 
stated, Mrs. Creed’s house, and the windows of the first-floor 
room were open to admit the pleasant summer air. A young lady 
of six-and-twenty, whose eyes were perfectly wide open, and a 
luckless boy of eighteen, blind with love and infatuation, were 
in that chamber together ; in which persons, as we have before 
seen them in the same place, the reader will have no difficulty 
in recognizing Mr. Arthur Pendennis and Miss Costigan. 

The poor boy had taken the plunge. Trembling with pas- 
sionate emotion, his heart beating and throbbing fiercely, tears 
rushing forth in spite of him, his voice almost choking with 
feeling, poor Pen had said those words which he could withhold 
no. more, and flung himself and his whole store of love, and ad- 
miration, and ardor, at the feet of this mature beauty. Is he 
the first who has done so ? Have none before or after him 
staked all their treasure of life, as a savage does his land and 
possessions againt a draught of the fair-skins’ fire-water, or a 
couple of bauble-eyes ? 

“ Does your mother know of this, Arthur 'l ” said Miss Fother- 
ingay, slowly. He seized her hand madly and kissed it a 
thousand times. She did not withdraw it. “ Does the old lady 
know it ? ” Miss Costigan thought to herself, “ well, perhaps 
she may,” and then she remembered what a handsome diamond 
cross Mrs. Pendennis had on the night of the play, and thought, 
“ sure it will go in the family.” 

“ Calm yourself, dear Arthur,” she said, in her low rich 
voice, and smiled sweetly and gravely upon him. Then with 
her disengaged hand, she put the hair lightly off his throbbing 
forehead. He was in such a rapture and whirl of happiness 
that he could hardly speak. At last he gasped out, “ My 
mother has seen you and admires you beyond measure. She 
will learn to love you soon : who can do otherwise ? She will 
love you because I do.” 

“ ’Deed then, I think you do,” said Miss Costigan, perhaps 
with a sort of pity for Pen. 

Think she did ! Of course here Mr. Pen went off into a 


7o 


PENDENNIS. 


rhapsody which, as we have perfect command over our own 
feelings, we have no right to overhear. Let the poor boy fling 
out his simple heart at the woman’s feet, and deal gently with 
him. It is best to love wisely, no doubt : but to love foolishly 
is better than not to be able to love at all. Some of us can’t : 
and are proud of our impotence too. 

At the end of his speech, Pen again kissed the imperial 
hand with rapture — and I believe it was at this very moment, 
and while Mrs. Dean and Doctor Portman were engaged in 
conversation, that young Master Ridley Roset, her son, pulled 
his mother by the back of her capacious dress and said — 

“ I say, ma ! look up there ” — and he waggled his innocent 
head. 

That was, indeed, a view from the Dean’s garden such as 
seldom is seen by Deans — or is written in Chapters. There 
was poor Pen performing a salute upon the rosy fingers of his 
charmer, who received the embrace with perfect calmness and 
good-humor. Master Ridley looked up and grinned, little Miss 
Rosa looked at her brother, and opened the mouth of astonish- 
ment. Mrs. Dean 3 countenance defied expression, and as for 
Dr. Portman, when he beheld the scene, and saw his prime 
favorite and dear pupil Pen, he stood mute with rage and 
wonder. 

Mrs. Haller spied the party below at the same moment, and 
gave a start and a laugh. “ Sure there’s somebody in the 
Dean’s garden,” she cried out ; and withdrew with perfect 
calmness, whilst Pen darted away with his face glowing like 
coals. The garden party had re-entered the house when he 
ventured to look out again. The sickle moon was blazing 
bright in the heavens then, the stars were glittering, the bell of 
the cathedral tolling nine, the Dean’s guests (all save one, who 
had called for his horse Dumpling, and ridden off early) were 
partaking of tea and buttered cakes in Mrs. Dean’s drawing- 
room — when Pen took leave of Miss Costigan. 

Pen arrived at home in due time afterwards, and was going 
to slip off to bed, for the poor lad was greatly worn and agitated, 
and his high-strung nerves had been at almost a maddening 
pitch — when a summons came to him by John the old footman, 
whose countenance bore a very ominous look, that his mother 
must see him below. 

On this he tied on his neck-cloth again, and went down stairs 
to the drawing-room. There sat not only his mother, but her 
friend, the Reverend Doctor Portman. Helen’s face looked 
very pale by the light of the lamp — the Doctor’s was flushed, 
on the contrary, and quivering with anger and emotion. 


PENDENNIS. 


71 

Pen saw" at once that there was a crisis, and that there had 
been a discovery. “ Now for it,” he thought. 

“ Where have you been, Arthur ? ” Helen said in a trembling 
voice. 

“ How can you look that — that dear lady, and a Christian 
clergyman in the face, sir ? ” bounced out the Doctor, in spite 
of Helen’s pale, appealing looks. “ Where has he been ? Where 
his mother’s son should have been ashamed to go. For your 
mother’s an angel, sir, an angel. How dare you bring pollution 
into her house, and make that spotless creature wretched with 
the thoughts of your crime ? ” 

“ Sir ! ” said Pen. 

“ Don’t deny it, sir,” roared the Doctor. “ Don’t add lies, 
sir, to your other infamy. I saw you myself, sir. I saw you 
from the Dean’s garden. I saw you kissing the hand of that 
infernal painted ” — 

“ Stop,” Pen said, clapping his fist on the table, till the lamp 
flickered up and shook, I am a very young man, but you will 
please to remember that I am a gentleman — I will hear no abuse 
of that lady.” 

“Lady, sir,” cried the doctor, “ that a lady — you — you — you 
stand in your mother’s presence and call that — that woman a 
lady ! ” — 

“ In anybody’s presence,” shouted out Pen. * She is worthy 
of any place. She is as pure as any woman. She is as good 
as she is beautiful. If any man but you insulted her, I would 
tell him what I thought ; but as you are my oldest friend, I 
suppose you have the privilege to doubt of my honor.” 

“ No, no, Pen, dearest Pen,” cried out Helen in an excess 
of joy. “ I told, I told you, Doctor, he was not — not what you 
thought : ” and the tender creature coming trembling forward, 
flung herself on Pen’s shoulder. 

Pen felt himself a man, and a match for all the Doctors in 
Doctordom. He was glad this explanation had come. “You 
saw how beautiful she was,” he said to his mother, with a 
soothing, protecting air, like Hamlet with Gertrude in the play. 
“ I tell you, dear mother, she is as good. When you know her 
you will say so. She is of all, except you, the simplest, the 
kindest, the most affectionate of women. Why should she not 
be on the stage ? — She maintains her father by her labor.” 

“ Drunken old reprobate,” growled the Doctor, but Pen did 
not hear or heed. 

“ If you could see, as I have, how orderly her life is, how 
pure and pious her whole conduct, you would — as I do — yes, as 


7 2 


PENDENNIS. 


I do ” — (with a savage look at the Doctor) — “ spurn the slan- 
derer who dared to do her wrong. Her father was an officer, 
and distinguished himself in Spain. He was a friend of His 
Royal Highness the Duke of Kent, and is intimately known to 
the Duke of Wellington, and some of the first officers of our 
army. He has met my uncle Arthur at Lord Hill’s, he thinks. 
His own family is one of the most ancient and respectable in 
Ireland, and indeed is as good as our own. The — the Costigans, 
were kings of Ireland.” 

“Why, God bless my soul,” shrieked out the Doctor, hardly 
knowing whether to burst with rage or laughter, “ you don’t 
mean to say you want to marry her ? ” 

Pen put on his most princely air. “What else, Dr. Port- 
man,” he said, “ do you suppose would be my desire ? ” 

Utterly foiled in his attack, and knocked down by this sudden 
lunge of Pen’s, the Doctor could only gasp out, “ Mrs. Pen- 
dennis, ma’am, send for the Major.” 

“ Send for the Major ? with all my heart,” said Arthur, 
Prince of Pendennis and Grand Duke of Fairoaks, with a most 
superb wave of the hand. And the colloquy terminated by the 
writing of those two letters which were laid on Major Penden- 
nis’s breakfast-table, in London, at the commencement of Prince 
Arthur’s most veracious history. 


CHAPTER VII. 

IN WHICH THE MAJOR MAKES HIS APPEARANCE. 

Our acquaintance, Major Arthur Pendennis, arrived in due 
time at Fairoaks, after a dreary night passed in the mail- 
coach, where a stout fellow-passenger, swelling preternaturally 
with great-coats, had crowded him into a corner, and kept 
him awake by snoring indecently ; where a widow lady, op- 
posite, had not only shut out the fresh air by closing all the 
Windows of the vehicle, but had filled the interior with fumes 
of Jamaica rum and water, which she sucked perpetually 
from a bottle in her reticule ; where, whenever he caught a 
brief moment of sleep, the twanging of the horn at the 
turnpike gates, or the scuffling of his huge neighbor wedging 
him closer and closer, or the play of the widow’s feet on his 


PENDENNIS ; 


73 

own tender toes, speedily woke up the poor gentleman to the 
horrors and realities of life — a life which has passed away now, 
and become impossible, and only lives in fond memories. Eight 
miles an hour, for twenty or five-and-twenty hours, a tight mail- 
coach, a hard seat, a gouty tendency, a perpetual change of 
coachmen grumbling because you did not fee them enough, a 
fellow-passenger partial to spirits-and-water, — who has not borne 
these ev :i<i in the jolly old times ? and how could people travel 
under suci. difficulties ? And yet they did. Night and morning 
passed, and the Major, with a yellow face, a bristly beard, a 
wig out of curl, and strong rheumatic griefs shooting through 
various limbs of his uneasy body, descended at the little lodge- 
gate at Fairoaks, where the porteress and gardener’s wife 
reverentially greeted him ; and, still more respectfully, Mr. 
Morgan, his man. 

Helen was on the look-out for this expected guest, and saw 
him from her window. But she did not come forward imme- 
diately to greet him. She knew the Major did not like to be 
seen at a surprise, and required a little preparation before he 
cared to be visible. Pen, when a boy, had incurred sad 
disgrace, by carrying off from the Major’s dressing-table a little 
morocco box, which it must be confessed contained the Major’s 
back teeth, which he naturally would leave out of his jaws in a 
jolting mail-coach, and without which he would not choose to 
appear. Morgan, his man, made a mystery of mystery of his 
wigs : curling them in private places : introducing them privily 
to his master’s room ;• — nor without his head of hair would the 
Major care to show himself to any member of his family, or 
any acquaintance. He went to his apartment then and supplied 
these deficiencies ; he groaned, and moaned, and wheezed, and 
cursed Morgan through his toilet, as an old buck will, who has 
been up all night with a rheumatism, and has a long duty to 
perform. And finally being belted, curled, and set straight, he 
descended upon the drawing-room, with a grave majestic air, 
such as befitted one who was at once a man of business and a 
man of fashion. 

Pen was not there, however ; only Helen, and little Laura 
sewing at her knees ; and to whom he never presented more 
than a forefinger, as he did on this occasion after saluting his 
sister-in-law. Laura took the finger trembling and dropped it 
— and then fled out of the room. Major Pendennis did not 
want to keep her, or indeed to have her in the house at all, 
and had his private reason for disapproving of her ; which we 
may mention on some future occasion. Meanwhile Laura 


PENDENNIS. 


74 

disappeared, and wandered about the premises seeking tor 
Pen : whom she presently found in the orchard, pacing up and 
down a walk there in earnest conversation with Mr. Smirke. 
He was so occupied that he did not hear Laura’s clear voice 
singing out, until Smirke pulled him by the coat, and pointed 
towards her as she came running. 

She ran up and put her hand into his. “ Come in, Pen,” 
she said, “ there’s somebody come ; uncle Arthur’s come.” 

“ He is, is he ? ” said Pen, and she felt him grasp her little 
hand. He looked round at Smirke with uncommon fierceness, 
as much as to say, I am ready for him or any man — Mr. Smirke 
cast up his eyes as usual, and heaved a gentle sigh. 

“ Lead on, Laura,” Pen said, with a half fierce, half comic 
air — “ Lead on, and say I wait upon my uncle.” But he was 
laughing in order to hide a great anxiety : and was screwing his 
courage inwardly to face the ordeal which he knew was now 
before him. 

Pen had taken Smirke into his confidence in the last two 
days, and after the outbreak attendant on the discovery of 
Doctor Portman, and during every one of those forty-eight 
hours which he had passed in Mr. Smirke ’s society, had done 
nothing but talk to his tutor about Miss Fotheringay — Miss 
Emily Fotheringay — Emily, &c., to all which talk Smirke 
listened without difficulty, for he was in love himself, most 
anxious in all things to propitiate Pen, and indeed very much 
himself enraptured by the personal charms of this goddess, 
whose like, never having been before at a theatrical representa- 
tion, he had not beheld until now. Pen’s fire and volubility, 
his hot eloquence and rich poetical tropes and figures, his 
manly heart, kind, ardent, and hopeful, refusing to see any 
defects in the person he loved, any difficulties in their position 
that he might not overcome, had half convinced Mr. Smirke 
that the arrangement proposed by Mr. Pen was a very feasible 
and prudent one, and that it would be a great comfort to have 
Emily settled at Fairoaks, Captain Costigan in the yellow room 
established for life there, and Pen married at eighteen. 

And it is a fact that in these two days, the boy had almost 
talked over his mother too ; had parried all her objections one 
after another with that indignant good sense which is often 
the perfection of absurdity ; and had brought her almost to 
acquiesce in the belief that if the marriage was doomed in 
heaven, why doomed it was — that if the young woman was a 
good person, it was all that she for her part had to ask ; and 
rather to dread the arrival of the guardian uncle who she 


PENDENNIS. 


75 

foresaw would regard Mr. Pen’s marriage in a manner very 
different to that simple, romantic, honest, and utterly absurd 
way, in which the widow was already disposed to look at 
questions of this sort. Helen Pendennis was a country-bred 
woman, and the book of life, as she interpreted it, told her a 
different story to that page which is read in cities. It pleased 
her (with that dismal pleasure which the idea of sacrificing 
themselves gives to certain women), to think of the day when 
she would give up all to Pen, and he should bring his wife 
home, and she would surrender the keys and the best bedroom 
and go and sit at the side of the table, and see him happy. 
What did she want in life, but to see the lad prosper ? As an 
empress was certainly not too good for him, and would be 
honored by becoming Mrs. Pen ; so if he selected humble 
Esther instead of Queen Vashti, she would be content with his 
lordship’s choice. Never mind how lowly or poor the person 
might be who was to enjoy that prodigious honor, Mrs. Pen- 
dennis was willing to bow before her and welcome her, and 
yield her up the first place. But an actress — a mature woman, 
who had long ceased blushing except with rouge, as she stood 
under the eager glances of thousands of eyes — an illiterate and 
ill-bred person, very likely, who must have lived with light 
associates, and have heard doubtful conversation — Oh ! it was 
hard that such a one should be chosen, and that the matron 
should be deposed to give place to such a Sultana. 

All these doubts the widow laid before Pen during the two 
days which had of necessity to elapse ere the uncle came down'; 
but he met them with that happy frankness and ease which a 
young gentleman exhibits at his time of life, and routed his 
mother’s objections with infinite satisfaction to himself. Miss 
Costigan was a paragon of virtue and delicacy ! she was as 
sensitive as the most timid maiden ; she was as pure as the 
unsullied snow ; she had the finest manners, the most graceful 
wit and genius, the most charming refinement, and justness of 
appreciation in all matters of taste ; she had the most admirable 
temper and devotion to her father, a good old gentleman of high 
family and fallen fortunes, who had lived, however, with the 
best society in Europe : he was in no hurry, and could afford to 
wait any time — till he was one-and-twenty. But he felt (and 
here his face assumed an awful and harrowing solemnity) that 
he was engaged in the one only passion of his life, and that 
DEATH alone could close it. 

Helen told him, with a sad smile and a shake of the head, 
that people survived these passions, and as for long engage- 


PEND ENNIS. 


76 

merits contracted between very young men and old women — • 
she knew an instance in her own family — Laura’s poor father 
was an instance — how fatal they were. 

Mr. Pen, however, was resolved that death must be his doom 
in case of disappointment, and rather than this — rather than 
baulk him in fact — this lady would have submitted to any 
sacrifice or personal pain, and would have gone down on her 
knees and have kissed the feet of a Hottentot daughter-in-law. 

Arthur knew his power over the widow, and the young tyrant 
was touched whilst he exercised it. In those two days he 
brought her almost into submission, and patronized her very 
kindly ; and he passed one evening with the lovely pie-maker at 
Chatteris, in which he bragged of his influence over his mother ; 
and he spent the other night in composing a most flaming and 
conceited copy of verses to his divinity, in which he vowed, like 
Montrose, that he would make her famous with his sword and 
glorious by his pen, and that he would love her as no mortal 
woman had been adored since the creation of womankind. 

It was on that night, long after midnight, that wakeful 
Helen, passing stealthily by her son’s door, saw a light stream- 
ing through the chink of the door into the dark passage, and 
heard Pen tossing and tumbling and mumbling verses in his bed. 
She -waited outside for a while, anxiously listening to him. In 
infantile fevers and early boyish illnesses, many a night before, 
the kind soul had so kept watch. She turned the lock very 
softly now, and went in so gently, that Pen for a moment did 
not see her. His face was turned from her. His papers on 
his desk were scattered about, and more were lying on the bed 
round him. He was biting a pencil and thinking of rhymes 
and all sorts of follies and passions. He was Hamlet jumping 
into Ophelia’s grave : he was the Stranger taking Mrs. Haller 
to his arms, beautiful Mrs. Haller, with the raven ringlets fall- 
ing over her shoulders. Despair and Byron, Thomas Moore 
and all the Loves of the Angels, Waller and Herrick, Bdranger 
and all the love-sosigs he had ever read, were working and seeth- 
ing in this young gentleman’s mind, and he was at the very 
height and paroxysm of the imaginative phrensy, when his 
mother found him. 

“ Arthur,” said the mother’s soft silver voice : and he started 
Up and turned round. He clutched some of the papers and 
pushed them under the pillow. 

“ Why don’t you go to sleep, my dear ? ” she said, with a 
sweet tender smile, and sat down on the bed and took one of 
his hot hands. 


PENDENNIS. 


77 


Pen looked at her wildly for an instant — “ I couldn’t sleep,’’ 
he said — “ I — I was — I was writing.” — And hereupon he flung 
his arms round her neck and said, “ O mother ! I love her, I 
love her ! ” — How could such a kind soul as that help soothing 
and pitying him ? The gentle creature did x her best : and 
thought with a strange wonderment and tenderness, that it was 
only yesterday that he was a child in that bed : and how she 
used to come and say her prayers over it before he woke upon 
holiday mornings. 

They were very grand verses, no doubt, although Miss 
Fotheringay did not understand them ; but old Cos, with a wink 
and a knowing finger on his nose, said, “ Put them up with th’ 
hother letthers, Milly darling. Poldoody’s pomes was nothing 
to this.” So Milly locked up the manuscripts. 

When then, the Major being dressed and presentable, pre- 
sented himself to Mrs. Pendennis, he found in the course of 
ten minutes’ colloquy that the poor widow was not merely dis- 
tressed at the idea of the marriage contemplated by Pen, but 
actually more distressed at thinking that the boy himself was 
unhappy about it, and that his uncle and he should have any 
violent altercation on the subject. She besought Major Pen- 
dennis to be very gentle with Arthur : “ He has a very high 
spirit, and'will not brook unkind words,” she hinted. “ Doctor 
Portman spoke to him rather roughly — and I must own un- 
justly, the other night — for my dearest boy’s honor is as high 
as any mother can desire — byt Pen’s answer quite frightened 
me, it was so indignant. Recollect he is a man now ; and be 
very — very cautious,” said the widow, laying a fair long hand 
on the Major’s sleeve. 

He took it up, kissed it gallantly, and looked in her alarmed 
face with wonder, and a scorn which he was too polite to show. 
“ Bon Dieu /” thought the old negotiator, “ the boy has actually 
talked the woman round, and she’d get him a wife as she would 
a toy if Master cried for it. -Why are there no such things as 
lettres-de-cachet — and a Bastille for young fellows of family?” 
The Major lived in such good company that he might be ex- 
cused for feeling like an Earl. — He kissed the widow’s timid 
hand, pressed it in both his, and laid it down on the table with 
one of his own over it, as he smiled and looked her in the face. 

“ Confess,” said’ he, “ now, that you are thinking how you 
possibly can make it up to your conscience to let the boy have 
his own way.” 

She blushed, and was moved in the usual manner of females, 
“ I am thinking that he is very unhappy — and I am too ” — 


78 


PENDENNIS. 


“To contradict him or to let him have his own wish?” 
asked the other ; and added, with great comfort to his inward 
self, “ I’m d — d if he shall.” 

“ To think that he should have formed so foolish and cruel 
and fatal an attachment,” the widow said, “which can but end 
in pain whatever be the issue.” 

' “ The issue sha’n’t be marriage, my dear sister,” the Major 
said resolutely. “ We’re not going to have a Pendennis, the 
head of the house, marry a strolling mountebank from a booth. 
No, no, we won’t marry into Greenwich Fair, ma’am.” 

“ If the match is broken suddenly off,” the widow inter- 
posed, “ I don’t know what may be the consequence. I know 
Arthur’s ardent temper, the intensity of his affections, the 
agony of his pleasures and disappointments, and I tremble at 
this one if it must be. Indeed, indeed, it must not come on 
him too suddenly.” 

“My dear madam,” the Major said, with an air of the deep- 
est commiseration, “ I’ve no doubt Arthur will have to suffer 
confoundedly before he gets over the little disappointment. 
But is he, think you, the only person who has been so rendered 
miserable ? ” 

“No, indeed,” said Helen, holding down her eyes. She 
was thinking of her own case, and was at that moment seven- 
teen again, and most miserable. 

“I, myself,” whispered her brother-in-law, “ have undergone 
a disappointment in early life. A young woman with fifteen 
thousand pounds, niece to an Earl — most accomplished crea- 
ture — a third of her money would have run up my promotion 
in no time, and I should have been a lieutenant-colonel at 
thirty : but it might not be. I was but a penniless lieutenant : 
her parents interfered : and I embarked for India, where I had 
the honor of being secretary to Lord Buckley, when Commander- 
in-Chief — without her. What happened ? We returned our 
letters, sent back our locks of hair (the Major here passed his 
fingers through his wig), we suffered — but we recovered. She 
is now a baronet’s wife with thirteen grown-up children ; altered, 
it is true, in person ; but her daughters remind me of what 
she was, and the third is to be presented early next week.” 

Helen did not answer. She was still thinking of old times. 
I suppose if one lives to be a hundred, there are certain pas- 
sages of one’s early life whereof the recollection will always 
carry us back to youth again, -and that Helen was thinking of 
one of these. 

“ Look at my own brother, my dear creature,” the Major 


PEND ENNIS. 


79 


continued gallantly : “ he himself, you know, had a little dis- 
appointment when he started in the — the medical profession — 
an eligible opportunity presented itself. Miss Balls, I remem- 
ber the name, was daughter of an apoth — a practitioner in very 
large practice ; my brother had very nearly succeeded in his 
suit. — But difficulties arose : disappointments supervened, and 
— and I am sure he had no reason to regret the disappointment 
which gave him this hand,” said the Major, and he once more 
politely pressed Helen’s fingers. 

“ Those* marriages between people of such different rank 
and age,” said Helen, “ are sacl things. I have known them 
produce a great deal of unhappiness. — Laura’s father, my 
cousin, who — who was brought up with me ” — she added, in a 
low voice, “ was an instance of that.” 

“ Most injudicious,” cut in the Major. “ I don’t know any- 
thing more painful than for a man to marry his superior in age 
or his inferior in station. Fancy marrying a woman of a low 
rank of life, and having your house filled with her confounded tag- 
rag-and-bobtail relations ! Fancy your wife attached to a mother 
who dropped her h’s, or called Maria Marire ! How are you 
to introduce her into society? My dear Mrs. Pendennis, I 
will name no names, but in the very best circles of London 
society I have seen men suffering the most excruciating agony, 
I have known them to be cut, to be lost utterly, from the vul- 
garity of their wives’ connections. What did Lady Snapperton 
do last year at her dejeune dansant after the Bohemian Ball ? 
She told Lord Brouncker that he might bring his daughters or 
send them with a proper chaperon, but that she would not re- 
ceive Lady Brouncker : who was a druggist’s daughter, or some 
such thing, and as Tom Wagg remarked of her, never wanted 
medicine certainly, for she never had an h in her life. Good 
Ged, what would have been the trifling pang of a separation in 
the first instance to the enduring infliction of a constant mis- 
alliance and intercourse with low people ? ” 

“ What, indeed ! ” said Helen, dimly disposed towards 
laughter, but yet checking the inclination, because she remem- 
bered in what prodigious respect her deceased husband held 
Major Pendennis and his stories of the great world. 

“ Then thi.s fatal woman is ten years older than that silly 
young scapegrace of an Arthur. What happens in such cases, 
my dear creature ? I don’t mind telling you now we are alone : 
that in the highest state of society, misery, undeviating misery, 
is the result. Look at Lord Clodworthy come into a room with 
his wife — why, good Ged, she looks like Clodworthy’s mother 


8o 


PENDENNIS. 


What’s the case between Lord and Lady Willowbank, whose 
love match was notorious ? He has already cut her down twice 
when she has hanged herself out of jealousy for Mademoiselle de 
Sainte Cunegonde, the dancer ; and mark my words, good Ged, 
one day he’ll 7iot cut the old woman down. No, my dear madam, 
you are not in the world, but I am : you are a little romantic 
and sentimental (you know you are — women with those large 
beautiful eyes always are) ; you must leave this matter to my 
experience. Marry this woman ! Marry at eighteen an actress 
of thirty — bah bah ! — I would as soon be sent into the kitchen 
and married to the cook.” 

“ I know the evils of premature engagements,” sighed out 
Helen : and as she has made this allusion no less than thrice 
in the course of the above conversation, and seems to be so 
oppressed with the notion of long engagements and unequal 
marriages, and as the circumstance we have to relate will ex- 
plain what perhaps some persons are anxious to know, namely 
who little Laura is, who has appeared more than once before 
us, it will be as well to clear up these points in another chapter. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

IN WHICH PEN IS KEPT WAITING AT THE DOOR, WHILE THE 
READER IS INFORMED WHO LITTLE LAURA WAS. 

Once upon a time, then, there was a young gentleman of 
Cambridge University who came to pass the long vacation at 
the village where young Helen Thistlewood was living with her 
mother, the widow of the lieutenant slain at Copenhagen. 
This gentleman, whose name was the Reverend Francis Bell, 
was nephew to Mrs. Thistlewood, and by consequence, own 
cousin to Miss Helen, so that it was very right that he should 
take lodgings in his aunt’s house, who lived in a very small 
way ; and there he passed the long vacation, reading with three 
or four pupils who accompanied him to the village. Mr. Bell 
was fellow of a college, and famous in the University for his 
learning and skill as a tutor. 

His two kinswomen understood pretty early that the rever- 
end gentleman was engaged to be married, and was only wait- 
ing for a college living to enable him to fulfil his engagement. 


PENDENNIS. 


81 

His intended bride was the daughter of another parson, who 
had acted as Mr. Bell’s own private tutor in Bell’s early life, and 
it was whilst under Mr. Coacher’s roof, indeed, and when only 
a boy of seventeen or eighteen years of age, that the impetuous 
young Bell had flung himself at the feet of Miss Martha Coacher, 
whom he was helping to pick peas in the garden. On his knees, 
before those peas and her, he pledged himself to an endless 
affection. 

Miss Coacher was by many years the young fellow’s senior : 
and her own heart had been lacerated by many previous disap- 
pointments in the matrimonial line. No less than three pupils 
of her father had trifled with those young affections. The 
apothecary of the village had despicably jilted her. The 
dragoon officer, with whom she had danced so many many times 
during that happy season which she passed at Bath with her 
gouty grandmamma, one -day gayly shook his bridle-rein and 
galloped away, never to return. Wounded by the shafts of re- 
peated ingratitude, can it be wondered at that the heart of 
Martha Coacher should pant to find rest somewhere ? She 
listened to the proposals of the gawky gallant honest boy, with 
great kindness and good-humor ; at the end of his speech she 
said, “ Law Bell, I’m sure you are too young to think of such 
things ; ” but intimated that she too would revolve them in her 
own virgin bosom. She could not refer Mr. Bell to her mamma, 
for Mr. Coacher was a widower, and being immersed in his 
books, was of course unable to take the direction of so frail 
and wondrous an article as a lady’s heart, which Miss Martha 
had to manage for herself. 

A lock of her hair tied up in a piece of blue ribbon, con- 
veyed to the happy Bell the result of the Vestal’s conference 
with herself. Thrice before had she snipt off one of her au- 
burn ringlets, and given them away. The possessors were faith- 
less, but the hair had grown again : and Martha had indeed 
occasion to say that men were deceivers, when she handed over 
this token of love to the simple boy. 

Number 6, however, was an exception to former passions — 
Francis Bell was the most faithful of lovers. When his time 
arrived to go to college, and it became necessary to acquaint 
Mr. Coacher of the arrangements that had been made, the lat- 
ter cried, “ God bless my soul, I hadn’t the least idea what was 
going on ; ” as was indeed very likely, for he had been taken 
in three times before in precisely a similar manner ; and Fran- 
cis went to the University resolved to conquer honors, so as to 
be able to lay them at the feet of his beloved Martha. 

6 


82 


PENDEMNIS. 


This prize in view made him labor prodigiously. News 
came, term after term, of the honors he won. He sent the 
prize-books for his college essays to old Coacher, and his silver 
declamation cup to Miss Martha. In due season he was high 
among the Wranglers, and a fellow of his college ; and during 
all the time of these transactions a constant tender correspond- 
ence was kept up with Miss Coacher, to whose influence, and 
perhaps with justice, he attributed the successes which he had 
won. 

By the time, however, when the Rev. Frances Bell, M.A., 
and Fellow and Tutor of his College, was twenty-six years of 
age, it happened that Miss Coacher was thirty-four, nor had her 
charms, her manners, or her temper improved since that sunny 
day in the spring-time of life when he found her picking peas 
in the garden. Having achieved his honors, he relaxed in 
the ardor of his studies, and his judgment and tastes also per- 
haps became cooler. The sunshine of the pea-garden faded 
away from Miss Martha, and poor Bell found himself engaged 
— and his hand pledged to that bond in a thousand letters — 
to a coarse, ill-tempered, ill-favored, ill-mannered middle-aged 
woman. 

It was in consequence of one of many altercations (in which 
Martha’s eloquence shone, and in which therefore she was fre- 
quently pleased to indulge), that Francis refused to take his 
pupils to Bearleader’s Green, where Mr. Coacher’s living was, 
and where Bell was in the habit of spending the summer : and 
he bethought him that he would pass the vacation at his aunt’s 
village, which he had not seen for many years — not since little 
Helen was a girl, and used to sit on his knee. Down then he 
came and lived with them. Helen was grown a beautiful young 
woman now. The cousins were nearly four months together, 
from June to October. They walked in the summer evenings : 
they met in the early morn. They read out of the same book 
when the old lady dozed at night over the candles. What little 
Helen knew, Frank taught her. She- sang to him : she gave 
her artless heart to him. She was aware of all his story. Had 
he made any secret ? — had he not shown the picture of the 
woman to whom he was engaged, and with a blush, — her letters, 
hard, eager, and cruel ? — The days went on and on, happier and 
closer, with more kindness, more confidence, and more pity. 
At last one morning in October came when Francis went back 
to college and the poor girl felt that her tender heart was gone 
with him. 

Frank too wakened up from the delightful midsummer-dream 


PENDENNIS . 


S3 

to the horrible reality of his own pain. He gnashed and tore 
at the chain which bound him. He was frantic to break it and 
be free. Should he confess ? — give his savings to the woman 
to whom he was bound, and beg his release ? — there was time 
yet — he temporized. No living might fall in for years to come. 
The cousins went on corresponding sadly and fondly : the 
betrothed woman, hard', jealous, and dissatisfied, complaining 
bitterly, and with reason, of her Francis’s altered tone. 

At last things came to a crisis, and the new attachment was 
discovered. Francis owned it, cared not to disguise it, rebuked 
Martha with her violent temper and angry imperiousness, and, 
worst of all, with her inferiority and her age. 

Her reply was, that if he did not keep his promise she would 
carry his letters into every court in the kingdom — letters in 
which his love was pledged to her ten thousand times ; and, 
after exposing him to the world as the perjurer and traitor he 
was, she would kill herself. 

Frank had one more interview with Helen, whose mother was 
dead then, and who was living companion with old Lady Ponty- 
pool, — one more interview, where it was resolved that he was to 
do his duty ; that is, to redeem his vow ; that is, to pay a debt 
cozened from him by a sharper ; that is, to make two honest 
people miserable. So the two judged their duty to be, and they 
parted. 

The living fell in only too soon ; but yet Frank Bell was 
quite a gray and worn-out man when he was inducted into it. 
Helen wrote him a letter on his marriage, beginning, “ My dear 
Cousin,” and ending “ always truly yours.” She sent him back 
the other letters, and the lock of his hair — all but a small piece. 
She had it in her desk when she was talking to the Major. 

Bell lived for three or four years in his living, at the end of 
which time, the Chaplainship of Coventry Island falling vacant, 
Frank applied for it privately, and having procured it, announced 
the appointment to his wife. She objected, as she did every- 
thing. He told her bitterly that he did not want her to come : 
so she went. Bell went out in Governor Crawley’s time, and 
was very intimate with that gentleman in his later years. And 
it was in Coventry Island, years after his own marriage, and 
five years after he had heard of the birth of Helen’s boy, that 
his own daughter was born. 

She was not the daughter of the first Mrs. Bell, who died of 
island fever very soon after Helen Pendennis and her husband, 
to whom Helen had told everything, wrote to inform Bell of 
the birth of their child. “ I was old, was I ? ” said Mrs. Bell 


84 


PENDENNIS. 


the first ; “ I was old, and her inferior, was I ? but I married 
you, Mr. Bell and kept you from marrying her ? ” and hereupon 
she died. Bell, married a colonial lady, whom he loved fondly. 
But he was not doomed to prosper in love; and, this lady dying 
in child-birth, Bell gave up too : sending his little girl home to 
Helen Pendennis and her husband, with a parting prayer that 
they w’ould befriend her. 

The little thing came to Fairoaks from Bristol, which is not 
very far off, dressed in black, and in company'of a soldier’s 
wife, her nurse, at parting from whom she wept bitterly. But 
she soon dried up her grief under Helen’s motherly care. 

Round her neck she had a locket with hair, which Helen 
had given, ah how many years ago ! to poor Francis, dead and 
buried. This child was all that was left of him, and she 
cherished, as so tender a creature would, the legacy which he 
had bequeathed to her. The girl’s name, as his dying letter 
stated, was Helen Laura. But John Pendennis, though he 
accepted the trust, was always rather jealous of the orphan ; 
and gloomily ordered that she should be called by her own 
mother’s name ; and not by that first one which her father had 
given her. She was afraid of Mr. Pendennis, to the last 
moment of his life. And it was only when her husband was 
gone that Helen dared openly to indulge in the tenderness 
which she felt for the little girl. 

Thus it was that Laura Bell became Mrs. Pendennis’s 
daughter. Neither her husband nor that gentleman’s brother, 
the Major, viewed her with very favorable eyes. She reminded 
the first of circumstances in his wife’s life which he was forced 
to accept, but would have forgotten much more willingly : and 
as for the second, how could he regard her ? She was neither 
related to his own family of Pendennis, nor to any nobleman 
in this empire, and she had but a couple of thousand pounds 
for her fortune. 

And now let Mr. Pen come in, who has been waiting all 
this while. 

Having strung up his nerves, and prepared himself, without 
at the door, for the meeting, he came to it, determined to face 
the awful uncle. He had settled in his mind that the encounter 
was to be a fierce one, and was resolved on bearing it through 
with all the courage and dignity of the famous family which he 
represented. And he flung open the door and entered with 
the most severe and warlike expression, armed cap-(l-pie as it 
were, with lance couched and plumes displayed, and glancing 
at his adversary, as if to say, “ Come on, I’m ready.” 


PENDENNIS 


*5 

The old man of the world, as he surveyed the boy’s 
demeanor, could hardly help a grin at his admirable pompous 
simplicity. Major Pendennis too had examined his ground ; 
and finding that the widow was already half won over to the 
enemy, and having a shrewd notion that threats and tragic 
exhortations would have no effect upon the boy, who was 
inclined to be perfectly stubborn and awfully serious, the 
Major laid aside the authoritative manner at once, and with the 
most good-humored natural smile in the world, held out his 
hands to Pen, shook the lad’s passive fingers gayly, and said, 
“ Well, Pen, my boy, tell us all about it.” 

Helen was delighted with the generosity of the Major’s good- 
humor. On the contrary, it quite took aback and disappointed 
poor Pen, whose nerves were strung up for a tragedy, and who 
felt that his grand entree was altogether baulked and ludicrous. 
He blushed and winced with mortified vanity and bewilder- 
ment. He felt immensely inclined to begin to cry. “ I — I — I 
didn’t know that you were come till just now,” he said : “ is — 
is — town very full I suppose ? ” 

If Pen could hardly gulp his tears down, it was all the 
Major could do to keep from laughter. He turned round and 
shot a comical glance at Mrs. Pendennis, who too felt that the 
scene was at once ridiculous and sentimental. And so, having 
nothing to say, she went up and kissed Mr. Pen : as he thought 
of her tenderness and soft obedience to his wishes, it is very 
possible too the boy was melted. 

“What a couple of fools they are,” thought the old guardian. 
“ If I hadn’t come down, she would have driven over in state 
to pay a visit and give her blessing to the young lady’s family.” 

“ Come, come,” said he, still grinning at the couple, “ let 
us have as little sentiment as possible, and Pen, my good 
fellow, tell us the whole story.” 

Pen got back at once to his tragic and heroical air. “ The 
story is, sir,” said he, “ as 1 have written it to you before. I 
have made the acquaintance of a most beautiful and most vir- 
tuous lady ; of a high family, although in reduced circum- 
stances ; I have found the woman in whom I know that the 
happiness of my life is centred ; I feel that I never, never can 
think about any woman but her. I am aware of the difference 
of our ages and other difficulties in my way. But my affection 
was so great that I felt I could surmount all these : — that we 
both could : and she has consented to unite her lot with mine, 
and to accept my heart and my fortune.” 

“ How much is that, my boy ? ” said the Major. “ Has 


PENDENNIS. 


86 

anybody left you some money ? I don’t know that you are 
worth a shilling in the world.” 

“ You know what I have is his,” cried out Mrs. Pendennis. 

“ Good heavens, madam, hold your tongue ! ” was what the 
guardian was disposed to say ; but he kept his temper, not 
without a struggle. “No doubt, no doubt,” he said. “You 
would sacrifice anything for him. Everybody knows that. But 
it is, after all then, your fortune which Pen is offering to the 
young lady ; and of which he wishes to take possession at 
eighteen.” 

“ I know my mother will give me anything,” Pen said, look- 
ing rather disturbed. 

“Yes, my good fellow, but there is reason in all things. If 
your mother keeps the house, it is but fair that she should 
select her company. When you give her house over her head, 
and transfer her banker’s account to yourself for the benefit of 
Miss What-d’-you-call-’em — Miss Costigan — don’t you think you 
should at least have consulted my sister as one of the principal 
parties in the transaction ? I am speaking to you, you see, 
without the least anger or assumption of authority, such as the 
law and your father’s will give me over you for three years to 
come — but as one man of the world to another, — and I ask 
you, if you think that, because you can do what you like with 
your mother, therefore you have a right to do so ? As you are 
her dependent, would it not have been more generous to wait 
before you took this step, and at least to have paid her the 
courtesy to ask her leave ? ” 

Pen held down his head, and began dimly to perceive that 
the action on which he had prided himself as a most romantic, 
generous instance of disinterested affection, was perhaps a very 
selfish and headstrong piece of folly. 

“ I did it in a moment of passion,” said Pen, floundering ; “ I 
was not aware what I was going to say or to do ” (and in this 
he spoke with perfect sincerity). “ But now it is said, and I 
stand to it. No ; I neither can nor will recall it. I’ll die rather 
than do so. And I — I don’t want to burden my mother,” he 
continued. “ I’ll work for myself. I’ll go on the stage, and act 
with her. She — she says I should do well there.” 

“ But will she take you on those terms ? ” the Major inter- 
posed. “ Mind, I do not say that Miss Costigan is not the most 
disinterested of women : but, don’t you suppose now, fairly, that 
your position as a young gentleman of ancient birth and decent 
expectations, forms a part of the cause why she finds your ad- 
dresses welcome ? ” 


PENDENNIS. g 7 

“ I’ll die, I say, rather than forfeit my pledge to her,” said 
Pen, doubling his fists and turning red. 

“ Who asks you, my dear friend ? ” answered the impertur- 
bable guardian. “ No gentleman breaks his word, of course, 
when it has been given freely. But after all, you can wait. You 
owe something to your mother, something to your family — some- 
thing to me as your father’s representative.” 

“ Oh, of course,” Pen said, feeling rather relieved. 

“Well, as you have pledged your word to her, give us an- 
other, will you, Arthur ? ” 

“ What is it ? ” Arthur asked. 

“ That you will make no private marriage — that you won’t be 
taking a trip to Scotland, you understand.” 

“ That would be a falsehood. Pen never told his mother a 
falsehood,” Helen said. 

Pen hung down his head again, and his eyes filled with tears 
of shame. Had not this whole intrigue been a falsehood to 
that tender and confiding creature who was ready to give up all 
for his sake ? He gave his uncle his hand. 

“ No, sir — on my word of honor, as a gentleman,” he said, 
“ I will never marry without my mother’s consent ! ” and giving 
Helen a bright parting look of confidence and affection un- 
changeable, the boy went out of the drawing-room into his own 
study. 

“ He’s an angel — he’s an angel,” the mother cried out in 
one of her usual raptures. 

“ He comes of a good stock, ma’am,” said her brother-in- 
law — “ of a good stock on both sides.” The Major was greatly 
pleased with the result of his diplomacy — so much so, that he 
once more saluted the tips of Mrs. Pendennis’s glove, and 
dropping the curt, manly, and straightforward tone in which he 
had conducted the conversation with the lad, assumed a certain 
drawl, which he always adopted when he was most conceited 
and fine. 

“ My dear creature,” said he, in that his politest tone, “ I 
think it certainly as well that I came down, and I flatter myself 
that last botte was a successful one. I tell you how I came to 
think of it. Three years ago my kind friend Lady Ferrybridge 
sent for me in the greatest state of alarm abdut her son Gretna, 
whose affair you remember, and implored me to use my influ- 
ence with the young gentleman, who was engaged in an affaire 
de cceur with a Scotch clergyman’s daughter, Miss Mac Toddy. 
I implored, I entreated gentle measures. But Lord Ferrybridge 
was furious, and tried the high hand. Gretna was sulky and 


PENDENNIS. 


88 

silent, and his parents thought they had conquered. But what 
was the fact, my dear creature ? The young people had been 
married for three months before Lord Ferrybridge knew any- 
thing about it. And that was why I extracted the promise 
from Master Pen.” 

“ Arthur would never have done so,” Mrs. Pendennis said. 

“ He hasn’t, — that is one comfort,” answered the brother- 
in-law. 

Like a wary and patient man of the world, Major Pendennis 
did not press poor Pen any farther for the moment, but hoped 
the best from time, and that the young fellow’s eyes would be 
opened before long to see the absurdity of which he was guilty. 
And having-found out how keen the boy’s point of honor was, 
he worked kindly upon that kindly feeling with great skill, dis- 
coursing him over their wine after dinner, and pointing out to 
Pen the necessity of a perfect uprightness and openness in all 
his dealings, and entreating that his communications with his 
interesting young friend (as the Major politely called Miss 
Fotheringay) should be carried on with the knowledge, if not 
approbation, of Mrs. Pendennis. “ After all, Pen,” the Major 
said, with a convenient frankness that did not displease the 
boy, whilst it advanced the interests of the negotiator, “ you 
must bear in mind that you are throwing yourself away. Your 
mother may submit to your marriage as she would to anything 
else you desired, if you did but cry long enough for it : but be 
sure of this, that it can never please her. You take a young 
woman off the boards of a country theatre and prefer her, for 
such is the case, to one of the finest ladies in England. And 
your mother will submit to your choice, but you can’t suppose 
that she will be happy under it. I have often fancied, e?itre 
nous, that my sister had it in her eye to make a marriage be- 
tween you and that little ward of hers — Flora, Laura — what’s 
her name ? And I always determined to do my small endea- 
vor to prevent any such match. The child has but two thou- 
sand pounds, I am given to understand. It is only with the 
utmost economy and care that my sister can provide for the 
decent maintenance of her house, and for your appearance and 
education as a gentleman ; and I don’t care to own to you that 
I had other and much higher views for you. With your name 
and birth, sir — with your talents, which I suppose are respect- 
able, with the friends whom I have the honor to possess, I 
could have placed you in an excellent position — a remarkable 
position for a young man of such exceeding small means, and 
had hoped to see you, at least, try to restore the honors of our 


PENDENNIS. 


89 

name. Your mother’s softness stopped one prospect, or you 
might have been a general, like our gallant ancestor who fought 
at Ramillies and Malplaquet. I had another plan in view : my 
excellent and kind friend, Lord Bagwig, who is very well dis- 
posed towards me, would, I have little doubt, have attached 
you to his mission at Pumpernickel, and you might have ad- 
vanced in the diplomatic service. But, pardon me for recur- 
ring to the subject ; how is a man to serve a young gentleman 
of eighteen, who proposes to marry a lady of thirty, whom he 
has selected from a booth in a fair ? — well, not a fair, — barn. 
That profession at once is closed to you. The public service 
is closed to you. Society is closed to you. You see, my good 
friend, to what you bring yourself. You may get on at the bar 
to be sure, where I am given to understand that gentlemen of 
merit occasionally marry out of their kitchens ; but in no other 
profession. Or you may come and live down here — down here 
mon Dieu ! for ever ” (said the Major with . a dreary shrug, as 
he thought with inexpressible fondness of Pall Mall), “ where 
your mother will receive the Mrs. Arthur that is to be with 
perfect kindness ; where the good people of the county won’t 
visit you ; and where, by Gad, sir, I shall be shy of visiting you 
myself, for I’m a plain spoken man, and I own to you that I 
like to live with gentlemen for my companions ; where you will 
have to live, with rum-and-water drinking gentlemen-farmers, 
and drag through your life the young husband of an old woman, 
who, if she doesn’t quarrel with your mother, will at least 
cost that lady her position in society, and drag her down into 
that dubious caste into which you must inevitably fall. It is 
no affair of mine, my good sir. I am not angry. Your down- 
fall will not hurt me farther than that it will extinguish the 
hopes I had of seeing my family once more taking its place in 
the world. It is only your mother and yourself that will be 
ruined. And I pity you both from my soul. Pass the claret : 
it is some I sent to your poor father ; 1 remember I bought it 
at poor Lord Levant’s sale. But of course,” added the Major, 
smacking the wine, “ having engaged yourself, you will do what 
becomes you as a man of honor, however fatal your promise 
may be. " However, promise us on our side, my boy, what I 
set out by entreating you to grant, — that there shall be nothing 
clandestine, that you will pursue your studies, that you will 
only visit your interesting friend at proper intervals. Do you 
write to her much ? ” 

Pen blushed and said, “ Why, yes, he had written.” 

1 1 suppose verses, eh ! as well as prose ? I was a dab at 


PENDENNIS . 


90 

verses myself. I recollect when I first joined, I used to write 
verses for the fellows in the regiment ; and did some pretty 
things in that way. I was talking to my old friend General 
Hobbler about some lines I dashed off for him in the year 1806, 
when we were at the Cape, and, Gad, he remembered every 
line of them still ; for he’d used ’em so often, the old rogue, 
and had actually tried ’em on Mrs. Hobbler, sir — who brought 
him sixty thousand pounds. I suppose you’ve tried verses, eh 
Pen ? ” 

Pen blushed again, and said, “ Why, yes, he had written 
verses.” 

“ And does the fair one respond in poetry or prose ? ” asked 
the Major, eyeing his nephew with the queerest expression, as 
much as to say, “ O Moses and Green Spectacles ! what a fool 
the- boy is.” 

Pen blushed again. She had written, but not in verse, the 
young lover owned, and he gave his breast-pocket the benefit 
of a squeeze with his left arm, which the Major remarked, 
according to his wont. 

“ You have got the letters there, I see,” said the old cam- 
paigner, nodding at Pen and pointing to his own chest (which 
was manfully wadded with cotton by Mr. Stultz). “You know 
you have. I would give twopence to see ’em.” 

“ Why,” said Pen, twiddling the stalks of the strawberries, 
“ I — I,” but this sentence was never finished ; for Pen’s face 
was so comical and embarrassed, as the Major watched it, that 
the elder could contain his gravity no longer, and burst into a 
fit of laughter, in which chorus Pen himself was obliged to join 
after a minute : when he broke out fairly into a guffaw. 

It sent them with great good-humor into Mrs. Pendennis’s 
drawing-room. She was pleased to hear them laughing in the 
hall as they crossed it. 

“ You sly rascal ! ” said the Major, putting his arm gayly on 
Pen’s shoulder, and giving a playful push at the boy’s breast- 
pocket. He felt the papers crackling there sure enough. The 
young fellow was delighted — conceited — triumphant — and in a 
word, a spooney. 

The pair came to the tea-table in the highest spirits. The 
Major’s politeness was beyond expression. He had never 
tasted such good tea, and such bread was only to be had in the 
country. He asked Mrs. Pendennis for one of her charming 
songs. He then made Pen sing, and was delighted and aston- 
ished at the beauty of the boy’s voice : he made his nephew 
fetch his maps and drawings, and praised them as really re* 


PEND ENNIS. 


9 * 

markable works of talent in a young fellow : he complimented 
him on his French pronunciation : he flattered the simple boy 
as adroitly as ever lover flattered a mistress : and when bed- 
time came, mother and son went to their several rooms perfectly 
enchanted with the kind Major. 

When they had reached those apartments, I suppose Helen 
took to her knees as usual : and Pen read over his letters be- 
fore going to bed : just as if he didn’t know every word of 
them by heart already. In truth there were but three of those 
documents : and to learn their contents required no great effort 
of memory. 

In No. 1, Miss Fotheringay presents grateful compliments 
to Mr. Pendennis, and in her papa’s name and her own begs 
to thank him for his most beautiful presents. They will always 
be kept carefully ; and Miss F. and Captain C. will never forget 
the delightful evening which they passed on Tuesday last. 

No. 2, said — Dear Sir, we shall have a small quiet party of 
social friends at our humble board, next Tuesday evening, at an 
early tea , when I shall wear the beautiful scarf which, with its 
accompanying delightful verses, I shall ever, ever cherish : and papa 
bids me say how happy he will be if you will join “ the feast of 
reason and the flow of soul ” in our festive little party , as I am 
sure will be your truly grateful 

Emily Fotheringay. 

No. 3 was somewhat more confidential, and showed that 
matters had proceeded rather far. You were odious yesterday 
night, the letter said. Why did you not come to the stage- 
door ? Papa could not escort me on account of his eye ; he 
had an accident, and fell down over a loose carpet on the stair 
on Sunday night. I saw you looking at Miss Diggle all night ; 
and you were so enchanted with Lydia Languish you scarcely 
once looked at Julia. I could have crushed Bingley, I was so 
angry. I play Ella Rosenberg on Friday : will you come then ? 
Miss Diggle performs — evePyour 

E. F. 

These three letters Mr. Pen used to read at intervals, during 
the day and night, and embrace with that delight and fervor 
v/hich such beautiful compositions surely warranted. A thou- 
sand times at least he had kissed fondly the musky satin paper, 
made sacred to him by the hand of Emily Fotheringay.. This 
was all he had in return for his passion and flames, his vows 


PENDENNIS. 


92 

and protests, his rhymes and similes, his wakeful nights and 
endless thoughts, his fondness, fears and folly. The young 
wiseacre had pledged away his all for this : signed his name to 
endless promissory notes, conferring his heart upon the bearer : 
bound himself for life, and got back twopence as an equivalent. 
For Miss Costigan was a young lady of such perfect good con- 
duct and self-command, that she never would have thought of 
giving more, and reserved the treasures of her affection until 
she could transfer them lawfully at church. 

Howbeit, Mr. Pen was content with what tokens of regard 
he had got, and mumbled over his three letters in a rapture of 
high spirits, and went to sleep delighted with his kind old uncle 
from London, who must evidently yield to his wishes in time ; 
and, in a word, in a preposterous state of contentment with 
himself and all the world. 


CHAPTER IX. 

IN WHICH THE MAJOR OPENS THE CAMPAIGN. 

Let those who have the blessed privilege of an e?itree into 
the most select circles, admit that Major Pendennis was a man 
of no ordinary generosity and affection, in the sacrifice which 
he now made. He gave up London in May, — his newspapers 
and his mornings — his afternoons from club to club, his little 
confidential visits to my Ladies, his rides in Rotten Row, his 
dinners, and his stall at the Opera, his rapid escapades to Ful- 
ham or Richmond on Saturdays and Sundays, his bow from my 
Lord Duke or my Lord Marquis at the great London entertain- 
ments, and his name in the “ Morning Post ” of the succeeding 
day, — his quieter little festivals, more select, secret, and delight- 
ful — all these he resigned to lock himself into a lone little 
country house, with a simple widow 0 and a greenhorn of a son, 
a mawkish curate, and a little girl of twelve years of age. 

He made the sacrifice, and it was the greater that few knew 
the extent of it. His letters came down franked from town, 
and he showed the invitations to Helen with a sigh. It was 
beautiful and tragical to see him refuse one party after another 
— at least to those who could understand, as Helen didn’t, the 
melancholy grandeur of his self-denial. Helen did not, or only 


END ENNIS. 


93 


smiled at the awful pathos with which the Major spoke of the 
Court Guide in general : but young Pen looked with great re- 
spect at the great names upon the superscriptions of his uncle’s 
letters.^ and listened to the Major’s stories about the fashionable 
world with constant interest and sympathy. 

The elder Pendennis’s rich memory was stored with thou- 
sands of these delightful tales, and he poured them into Pen’s 
willing ears. He knew the name and pedigree of everybody 
in the Peerage, and everybody’s relations. “ My dear boy,” he 
would say, with a mournful earnestness and veracity, “ you can- 
not begin your genealogical studies too early ; I wish to Heavens 
you would read in Debrett every day. Not so much the histor- 
ical part (for the pedigrees, between ourselves, are many of 
them very fabulous, and there are few families that can show 
such a clear descent as our own) as the account of family 
alliances, and who is related to whom. I have known a man’s 
career in life blasted, by ignorance on this all-important sub- 
ject. Why, only last month, at dinner at my Lord Hobanob’s, 
a young man, who has lately been received amongst us, young 
Mr. Suckling (author of a work, I believe), began to speak 
lightly of Admiral Bowser’s conduct for ratting to Ministers, in 
what I must own is the most audacious manner. But who do 
you think sat next and opposite to this Mr. Suckling ? Why 
— why, next to him was Lady Grampound Bowser’s daughter, 
and opposite to him was Lord Grampound Bowser’s son-in-law. 
The infatuated young man went on cutting his jokes at the 
Admiral’s expense, fancying that all the world was laughing 
with him, and I leave you to imagine Lord Hobanob’s feelings 
— Hobanob’s ! — those of every well-bred man, as the wretched 
intrus was so exposing himself. He will never dine again in 
South Street. I promise you that .” 

With such discourses the Major entertained his nephew, as 
he paced the terrace in front of the house for his two hours’ 
constitutional walk, or as they sat together after dinner over 
their wine. He grieved that Sir Francis Clavering had not 
come down to the Park, to live in it since his marriage, and to 
make a society for the neighborhood. He mourned that Lord 
Eyrie was not in the country, that he might take Pen and pre- 
sent him to his lordship. “ He has daughters,” the Major 
said. “Who knows? you might have married Lady Emily or 
Lady Barbara Trehawk ; but all those dreams are over ; my poor 
fellow, you must lie on the bed which you have made for your- 
self.” 

These things to hear did young Pendennis seriously incline. 


PENDENNTS. 


94 

They are not so interesting in print as when delivered orally 
but the Major’s ancedotes of the great George, of the Royal 
Dukes, of the statesmen, beauties and fashionable ladies of the 
day, filled young Pen’s soul with longing and wonder ; and he 
found the conversations with his guardian, which sadly bored 
and perplexed poor Mrs. Pendennis, for his own part never 
tedious. 

It can’t be said that Mr. Pen’s new guide, philosopher and 
friend, discoursed him on the most elevated subjects, or treated 
the subjects which he chose in the most elevated manner. But 
his morality, such -as it was, was consistent. It might not, per- 
haps, tend to a man’s progress in another world, but it was pretty 
well calculated to advance his interests in this ; and then it must 
be remembered, that the Major never for one instant doubted 
that his views were the only views practicable, and that his con- 
duct was perfectly virtuous and respectable. He was a man of 
honor, in a word : and had his eyes, what he called, open. He 
took pity on this young greenhorn of a nephew, and wanted to 
open his eyes too. 

No man, for instance, went more regularly to church when 
in the country than the old bachelor. “ It don’t matter so much 
in town, Pen,” he said, “ for there the women go and the men 
are not missed. But when a gentleman is surses terres, he must 
give an example to the country people : and if I could turn a 
tune, I even think I should sing. The Duke of St. David’s, 
whom I have the honor of knowing, always sings in the country, 
and let me tell you, it has a doosed fine effect from the family 
pew. And you are somebody down here. As long as the 
Claverings are away you are the first man in the parish : or as 
good as any. You might represent the town if you played your 
cards well. Your poor dear father would have done so had he 
lived ; so might you. — Not if you marry a lady, however amia- 
ble, whom the country people won’t meet. — Well, well : it’s a 
painful subject. Let us change it, my boy.” But if Major 
Pendennis changed the subject once he recurred to it a score 
of times in the day : and the moral of his discourse always was, 
that Pen was throwing himself away. Now it does not require 
much coaxing or wheedling to make a simple boy believe that 
he is a very fine fellow. 

Pen was glad enough, we have said, to listen to his elder’s 
talk. The conversation of Captain Costigan became by no 
means pleasant to him, and the idea of that tipsy old father-in- 
law haunted him with terror. He couldn’t bring that man, un- 
shaven and reeking of punch, to associate with his mother. 


PENDENNIS. 


95 


Even about Emily — he faltered when the pitiless guardian 
began to question him. “Was she accomplished?” He was 
obliged to own, no. “ Was she clever ? ” Well, she had a very 
good average intellect : but he could not absolutely say she was 
clever. “ Come, let us see some of her letters.” So Pen con- 
fessed that he had but those three of which we have made 
mention — and that they were but trivial invitations or answers. 

“ She is cautious enough,” the Major said dryly. “ She is 
older than you, my poor boy ; ” and then he apologized with 
the utmost frankness and humility, and flung himself upon 
Pen’s good feelings, begging the lad to excuse a fond old uncle, 
who had only his family’s honor in view — for Arthur was ready 
to flame up in indignation whenever Miss Costigan’s honesty 
was doubted, and swore that he would never have her name 
mentioned lightly, and never, never would part from her. 

He repeated this to his uncle and his friends at home, and 
also, it must be confessed, to Miss Fotheringay and the amiable 
family at Chatteris, with whom he still continued to spend some 
portion of his time. Miss Emily was alarmed when she heard 
of the arrival of Pen’s guardian, and rightly conceived that the 
Major came down with hostile intentions to herself. “ I sup- 
pose ye intend to leave me, now your grand relation has come 
down from town. He’ll carry ye off, and you’ll forget your 
poor Emily, Mr. Arthur ! ” 

Forget her ! In her presence, in that of Miss Rouncy, the 
Columbine and Milly’s confidential friend of the Company, in 
the presence of the Captain himself, Pen swore he never could 
think of any other woman but his beloved Miss Fotheringay ; 
and the Captain, looking up at his foils, which were hung as a 
trophy on the wall of the room where Pen and he used to fence, 
grimly said, he would not advoise any man to meddle rashly with 
the affections of his darling child ; and would never believe his 
gallant young Arthur, whom he treated as his son, whom he 
called his son, would ever be guilty of conduct so revolting to 
every idaya of honor and humanitee. 

He went up and embraced Pen after speaking. He cried, 
and wiped his eye with one large dirty hand as he clasped Pen 
with the other. Arthur shuddered in that grasp, and thought 
of his uncle at home. His father-in-law looked unusually dirty 
and shabby ; the odor of whiskey-and-water was even more de- 
cided than in common. How was he to bring that man and his 
mother together ? He trembled when he thought that he had 
absolutely written to Costigan (inclosing to him a sovereign, 
the loan of which the worthy gentleman needed), and saying, 


PENDENNIS. 


96 

that one day he hoped to sign himself his affectionate son, 
Arthur Pendennis. He was glad to get away from Chatteris 
that day ; from Miss Rouncy the confidante ; from the old toping 
father-in-law ; from the divine Emily herself. “ O Emily, 
Emily,” he cried inwardly, as he rattled homewards on Rebecca, 
“ you little know what sacrifices I am making for you T — for you 
who are always so cold, so cautious, so mistrustful ! ” 

Pen never rode over to Chatteris, but the Major found out 
on what errand the boy had been. Faithful to his plan, Major 
Pendennis gave his nephew no let or hindrance ; but somehow 
the constant feeling that the senior’s eye was upon him, an un- 
easy shame attendant upon that inevitable confession which the 
evening’s conversation would be sure to elicit in the most 
natural simple manner, made Pen go less frequently to sigh 
away his soul at the feet of his charmer than he had been wont 
to do previous to his uncle’s arrival. There was no use trying 
to deceive him ; there was no pretext of dining with Smirke, or 
reading Greek plays with Foker ; Pen felt, when he returned 
from one of his flying visits, that everybody knew whence he 
came, and appeared quite guilty before his mother and guar- 
dian, over their books or their game at picquet. 

Once having walked out half a mile, to the Fairoak’s Inn, 
beyond the Lodge gates, to be in readiness for the Competitor 
coach, which changed horses there, to take a run for Chatteris, 
a man on the roof touched his hat to the young gentleman : it 
was his uncle’s man, Mr. Morgan, who was going on a message 
for his master, and had been took up at the Lodge, as he said. 
And Mr. Morgan came back by the Rival, too ; so that Pen 
had the pleasure of that domestic’s company both ways. Noth- 
ing was said at home. The lad seemed to have every decent 
liberty ; and yet he felt himself dimly watched and guarded, 
and that there were eyes upon him even in the presence of his 
Dulcinea. 

In fact, Pen’s suspicions were not unfounded, and his guar- 
dian had sent forth to gather all possible information regarding 
the lad and his interesting young friend. The discreet and in- 
genious Mr. Morgan, a London confidential valet, whose fidelity 
could be trusted, had been to Chatteris more than once, and 
made every inquiry regarding the past history and present hab- 
its of the Captain and his daughter. He delicately cross-ex- 
amined the waiters, the ostlers, and all the inmates of the bar 
at the George, and got from them what little they knew respect- 
ing the worthy Captain. He was not held in very great regard 
there, as it appeared. The waiters never saw the color of his 


PENDENNIS . 


97 


money, and were warned not to furnish the poor gentleman 
with any liquor for which some other party was not responsible. 
He swaggered sadly about the coffee-room there, consumed a 
tooth-pick, and looked over the paper, and if any friend asked 
him to dinner he stayed. 

From the servants of the officers at the barracks Mr. Mor- 
gan found that the Captain had so frequently and outrageously 
inebriated himself there, that Colonel Swallowtail had forbidden 
him the mess-room. The indefatigable Morgan then put him- 
self in communication with some of the inferior actors at the 
theatre and pumped them over their cigars and punch, and all 
agreed that Costigan was poor, shabby, and given to debt and 
to drink. But there was not a breath Upon the reputation of 
Miss Fotheringay: her father’s courage was reported to have 
displayed itself on more than one occasion towards persons 
disposed to treat his daughter with freedom. She never came 
to the theatre but with her father : in his most inebriated 
moments, that gentleman kept a watch over her : finally Mr. 
Morgan, from his own experience, added that he had been to 
see her hact, and was uncommon delighted with the perform- 
ance, besides thinking her a most splendid woman. 

Mrs: Creed, the pew-opener, confirmed these statements to 
Doctor Portman, who examined her personally. Mrs. Creed 
had nothing unfavorable to her lodger to divulge. She saw 
nobody ; only one or two ladies of the theatre. The Captain 
did intoxicate himself sometimes, and did not always pay his 
rent regularly, but he did when he had money, or rather Miss 
Fotheringay did. Since the young gentleman from Clavering 
had been and took lessons in fencing, one or two more had 
come from the barracks ; Sir Derby Oaks, and his young friend, 
Mr. Foker, which was often together ; and which was always 
driving over from Baymouth in the tandem. But on the occasions 
of the lessons, Miss F. was very seldom present, and generally 
came down stairs to Mrs. Creed’s own room. 

The Doctor and the Major consulting together as they often 
did, groaned in spirit over that information. Major Pendennis 
openly expressed his disappointment ; and, I believe, the Divine 
himself was ill-pleased at not being able to pick a hole in poor 
Miss Fotheringay’s reputation. 

Even about Pen himself, Mrs. Creed’s reports were desper- 
ately favorable. “ Whenever he come,” Mrs. Creed said, “ she 
always have me or one of the children with her. And Mrs. 
Creed, marm, says she, if you please marm, you’ll on no ac- 
count leave the room when that young gentleman’s here, And 

7 


PEND ENNIS. 


98 

many’s the time I’ve seen him a lookin’ as if he wished I was 
away, poor young man : and he took to coming in service time, 
when I wasn’t at home, of course : but she always had one 
of the boys up if her Pa wasn’t at home, or old Mr. Bows with 
her a teaching of her her lesson, or one of the young ladies of 
the theayter.” 

It was all true : whatever encouragements might have been 
given him before he avowed his passion, the prudence of Miss 
Emily was prodigious after Pen had declared himself : and the 
poor fellow chafed against her hopeless reserve. 

The Major surveyed the state of things with a sigh. “ If it 
were but a temporary liaison,” the excellent man said, “ one 
could bear it. A young fellow must sow his wild oats, and 
that sort of thing. But a virtuous attachment is the deuce. It 
comes of the d — d romantic notions boys get from being brought 
up by women.” 

“ Allow me to say, Major, that you speak a little too like a 
man of the world,” replied the doctor. “ Nothing can be more 
desirable for Pen than a virtuous attachment for a young lady 
of his own rank and with a corresponding fortune — this present 
infatuation, of course, I must deplore as sincerely as you do. 
If I were his guardian I should command him to give it up.” 

“ The very means, I tell you, to make him marry to-morrow. 
We have got time from him, that is all, and we must do our 
best with that.” 

“ I say, Major,” said the doctor, at the .end of the conversa- 
tion in which the above subject was discussed — “ I am not, of 
course, a play-going man — but suppose, I say, we go and see 
her.” 

The Major laughed — he had been a fortnight at Fairoaks, 
and strange to say, had not thought of that. “ Well,” he said, 
“ why not ? After all, it is not my niece, but Miss Fotheringay 
the actress, and we have as good a right as any other of the 
public to see her if we pay our money.” So upon a day when 
it was arranged that Pen was to dine at home, and pass the 
evening with his mother, the two elderly gentlemen drove over 
to Chatteris in the Doctor’s chaise, and there, like a couple of 
jolly bachelors, dined at the George Inn, before proceeding to 
the play. 

Only two other guests were in the room, — an officer of the 
regiment quartered at Chatteris, and a young gentleman whom 
the Doctor thought he had somewhere seen. They left them 
at their meal, however, and hastened to the theatre. It was 
Hamlet over again. Shakspeare was Article XL. of stout old 


PENDENNIS. 


99 

Doctor Portman’s creed, to which he always made a point of 
testifying publicly at least once in a year. 

We have described the play before, and how those who saw 
Miss Fotheringay perform in Ophelia saw precisely the same 
thing on one night as on another. Both the elderly gentlemen 
looked at her with extraordinary interest, thinking how very 
much young Pen was charmed with her. 

“ Gad,” said the Major, between his teeth, as he surveyed 
her when she was called forward as usual, and swept her 
curtseys to the scanty audience, “the young rascal has not 
made a bad choice.” 

The Doctor applauded her loudly and loyally. “ Upon 
my word,” said he, “ she is a very clever actress ; and I must 
say, Major, she is endowed with very considerable personal 
attractions.” 

“So that young officer thinks in the stage-box,” Major 
Pendennis answered, and he pointed out to Doctor Portman’s 
attention the young dragoon of the George Coffee-room, who 
sat in the box in question, and applauded with immense en- 
thusiasm. She looked extremely sweet upon him too, thought 
the Major : but that’s their way — and he shut up his natty 
opera-glass and pocketed it, as if he wished to see no more 
that night. Nor did the Doctor, of course, propose to stay for 
the after-piece, so they rose and left the theatre ; the Doctor, 
returning to Mrs. Portman, who was on a visit at the Deanery, 
and the Major walking home full of thought towards the 
George, where he had bespoken a bed. 


CHAPTER X. 

FACING THE ENEMY. 

Sauntering homewards, Major Pendennis reached the 
hotel presently, and found Mr. Morgan, his faithful valet, 
awaiting him at the door, who stopped his master as he was 
about to take a candle to go to bed, and said, with his usual 
air of knowing deference, “ I think, sir, if you would go into 
the coffee-room, there’s a young gentleman there as you would 
like to see.” 

“ What, is Mr. Arthur here ? ” the Major said, in great 
anger. 


IOO 


PENDENNIS. 


“ No, sir — but his great friend, Mr. Foker, sir. Lady 
Hagnes Foker’s son is here, sir. He’s been asleep in the 
coffee-room since he took his dinner, and has just rung for his 
coffee, sir. And I think, p’raps, you might like to git into 
conversation with him,” the valet said, opening the coffee-room 
door. , 

The Major entered : and there indeed was Mr. Foker, the 
only occupant of the place. He had intended to go to the 
play too, but sleep had overtaken him after a copious meal, 
and he had flung up his legs on the bench, and indulged in a 
nap instead of the dramatic amusement. The Major was med- 
itating how to address the young man, but the latter prevented 
him that trouble. 

“ Like to look at the evening paper, sir ? ” said Mr. Foker, 
who was always communicative and affable ; and he took up 
the “ Globe ” from his table, and offered it to the new-comer. 

“ I am very much obliged to you,” said the Major, with a 
grateful bow and smile. “ If I don’t mistake the family like- 
ness, I have the pleasure of speaking to Mr. Henry Foker, 
Lady Agnes Foker’s son. I have the happiness to name her 
ladyship among my acqaintances — and you bear, sir, a Rosher- 
ville face.” 

“ Hullo ! I beg your pardon,” Mr. Foker said, “ I took 
you ” — he was going to say — “ I took you for a commercial^ 
gent.” But he stopped that phrase. “ To whom have I the 
pleasure of speaking ? ” he added. 

“To a relative of a friend and schoolfellow of yours — 
Arthur Pendennis, my nephew, who has often spoken to me 
about you in terms of great regard. I am Major Pendennis, 
of whom you may have heard him speak. May I take my 
soda-water at your table ? I have had the pleasure of sitting 
at your grandfather’s.” 

“ Sir, you do me proud,” said Mr. Foker, with much courtesy. 
“And so you are Arthur Pendennis’s uncle, are you ?” 

“ And guardian,” added the Major. 

“ He’s as good a fellow as ever stepped, sir,” said Mr. Foker. 

“ I am glad you think so.” 

“ And clever, too — I was always a stupid chap, I was — but 
you see, sir, I know ’em when they are clever, and like ’em of 
that sort.” 

“You show your taste and your modesty, too,” said the 
Major. “ I have heard Arthur repeatedly speak of you, and 
he said your talents were very good.” 

“I am not good at the books,” Mr. Foker said, wagging his 


PENDENNIS. 


IOI 


head — “ never could manage that — Pendennis could — he used 
to do half the chaps’ verses — and yet you are his guardian ; 
and I hope you will pardon me for saying that I think. he’s what 
we call a flat,” the candid young gentleman said. 

The Major found himself on the instant in the midst of a 
most interesting and confidential conversation. “ And how is 
Arthur a flat ? ” he asked, with a smile. 

“You know,” Foker answered, winking at him— he would 
have winked at the Duke of Wellington with just as little 
scruple. “ You know Arthur’s a flat, — about women I mean.” 

“ He is not the first of us, my dear Mr. Harry,” answered 
the Major. “ I have heard something of this — but pray tell 
me more.” 

“ Why, sir, you see — it’s partly my fault. We went to the 
play one night, and Pen was struck all of a heap with Miss 
Fotheringay — Costigan her real name is — an uncommon fine 
gal she is too ; and the next morning I introduced him to the 
General, as we call her father — a regular old scamp — and such 
a boy for the whiskey-and-water ! — and he’s gone on being 
intimate there. And he’s fallen in love with her — and I’m 
blessed if he hasn’t proposed to her,” Foker said, slapping his 
hand on the table, until all the dessert began to jingle. 

“ What ! you know it too ? ” asked the Major. 

“ Know it ! don’t I ? and many more too. We were talking 
about it at mess, yesterday, and chaffing Derby Oaks — until he 
was as mad as a hatter. Know Sir Derby Oaks ? We dined 
together, and he went to the play : we were standing at the 
door smoking, I remember, when you passed in to dinner.” 

“ I remember Sir Thomas Oaks, his father, before he was a 
Baronet or a Knight ; he lived in Cavendish Square, and was 
Physician to Queen Charlotte.” 

“ The young one is making the money spin, I can tell you,” 
Mr. Foker said. 

“ And is Sir Derby Oaks,” the Major said, with great de- 
light and anxiety, “ another soupirant 1 ” 

“ Another what ? ” inquired Mr. Foker. 

“ Another admirer of Miss Fotheringay ? ” 

“ Lord bless you ! we call him Mondays, Wednesdays and 
Fridays, and Pen Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. But 
mind you, nothing wrong ! No, no ! Miss F. is a deal too 
wide awake for that, Major Pendennis. She plays off one 
against the other. What you call two strings to her bow.” 

“ I think you seem tolerably wide awake, too, Mr. Foker,” 
Pendennis said, laughing. 


102 


PENDENNI € . 


“ Pretty well, thank you, sir — how are you ?” Foker replied, 
imperturbably. “ I’m not clever, p’raps : but I am rather 
downy ; and partial friends say I know what’s o’clock tolerably 
well. Can I tell you the time of day in any way ? ” 

“ Upon my word,” the Major answered, quite delighted, “ I 
think you may be of very great service to me. You are a 
young man of the world, and with such one likes to deal. And 
as such I need not inform you that our family is by no means 
delighted at this absurd intrigue in which Arthur is engaged.” 

“ I should rather think not,” said Mr. Foker. “ Connection 
not eligible. Too much beer drunk on the premises. No Irish 
need apply. That I take to be your meaning.” 

The Major said it was, exactly : and he proceeded to exam- 
ine his new acquaintance regarding the amiable family into 
which his nephew proposed to enter, and soon got from the 
candid witness a number of particulars regarding the House of 
Costigan. 

We must do Mr. Foker the justice to say that he spoke most 
favorably of Mr. and Miss Costigan’s moral character. “ You 
see,” said he, “I think the General is fond of the jovial bowl, 
and if I wanted to be very certain of my money, it isn’t in his 
pocket I’d invest it — but he has always kept a watchful eye on 
his daughter, and neither he nor she will stand anything but 
what’s honorable. Pen’s attentions to her are talked about in 
the whole Company, and I hear all about them from a young 
lady who used to be very intimate with her, and with whose 
family I sometimes take tea in a friendly way. Miss Rouncy 
says Sir Derby Oaks has been hanging about Miss Fotherin- 
gay ever since his regiment has been down here ; but Pen has 
come in and cut him out lately, which has made the Baronet so 
mad, that he has been very near on the point of proposing too. 
Wish he would ; and you’d see which of the two Miss Fother- 
ingay would jump at.” 

“ I thought as much,” the Major said. “You give me a 
great deal of pleasure, Mr. Foker. I wish I could have seen 
you before.” 

“ Didn’t like to put in my oar,” replied the other. “ Don’t 
speak till I’m asked, when, if there’s no objection, I can speak 
pretty freely. Heard your man had been hankering about my 
servant — didn’t know myself what was going on until Miss 
Fotheringay and Miss Rouncy had the row about the ostrich 
feathers, when Miss R. told me everything.” 

“ Miss Rouncy, I gather, was the confidante of the other.” 

“ Confidant ? I believe you. Why she’s twice as clever a 


PENDENNIS. 


103 


girl as Fotheringay, and literary and that, while Miss Foth can’t 
do much more than read.” 

“ She can write,” said the Major, remembering Pen’s 
breast-pocket. 

Foker broke out into a sardonic “ He, he ! Rouncy writes 
her letters,” he said : “ every one of ’em ; and since they’ve 
quarrelled she don’t know how the deuce to get on. Miss 
Rouncy is an uncommon pretty hand, whereas the other one 
makes dreadful work of the writing and spelling when Bows 
ain’t by. Rouncy’s been settin’ her copies lately — she writes a 
beautiful hand, Rouncy does.” 

“ I suppose you know it pretty well,” said the Major, archly : 
upon which Mr. Foker winked at him again. 

“ I would give a great deal to have a specimen of her hand- 
writing,” continued Major Pendennis, “ I dare say you could 
give me one.” 

“ That would be too bad,” Foker replied. “ Miss F.’s 
writin’ ain’t so very bad, I dare say ; only she got Miss R. to 
write the first letter, and has gone on ever since. But you 
mark my word, that till they are friends again the letters will 
stop.” 

“ I hope they will never be reconciled,” the Major said with 
great sincerity. “ You must feel, my dear sir, as a man of the 
world, how fatal to my nephew’s prospects in life is this step 
which he contemplates, and how eager we all must be to free 
him from this absurd engagement.” 

“ He has come out uncommon strong,” said Mr. Foker : “ I 
have seen his verses • Rouncy copied ’em. And I said to my- 
self when I saw ’em, ‘ Catch me writin’ verses to a woman, — 
that’s all.’ ” 

“ He has made a fool of himself, as many a good fellow has 
before him. How can we make him see his folly, and cure it ? 
I am sure you will give us what aid you can in extricating a 
generous young man from such a pair of schemers as this 
father and daughter seem to be. Love on the lady’s side is 
out of the question.” 

“ Love, indeed ! ” Foker said. “ If Pen hadn’t two thou- 
sand a year when he came of age — ” 

“ If Pen hadn’t what ? ” cried out the Major in astonish- 
ment. 

“ Two thousand a year : hasn’t he got two thousand a year ? 
— the General says he has.” 

“ My dear friend,” shrieked out the Majoi, with an eager- 
ness which this gentleman rarely showed, “ thank you ! — thank 


io4 


PENDENNIS. 


you ! — I begin to see now. — Two thousand a year! Why, his 
mother has but five hundred a year in the world. — She is likely 
to live to eighty, and Arthur has not a shilling but what she 
can allow him.” 

“ What ! he ain’t rich then ? ” Foker asked. 

“ Upon my honor he has no more than what I say.” 

“ And you ain’t going to leave him anything ? ” 

The Major had sunk every shilling he could scrape together 
on annuity, and of course was going to leave Pen nothing ; but 
he did not tell Foker this. “ How much do you think a Major 
on half-pay can save ? ” he asked. “ If these people have 
been looking at him as a fortune, they are utterly mistaken — 
and — and you have made me the happiest man in the world.” 

“ Sir to you,” said Mr. Foker, politely, and when they 
parted for the night they shook hands with the greatest cor- 
diality; the younger gentleman promising the elder not to 
leave Chatteris without a further conversation in the morning. 
And as the Major went up to his room, and Mr. Foker smoked 
his cigar against the door pillars of the George, Pen, very 
likely, ten miles off, was lying in bed kissing the letter from 
his Emily. 

The next morning, before Mr. Foker drove off in his drag, 
the insinuating Major had actually got a letter of Miss Rouncy’s 
in his own pocket-book. Let it be a lesson to women how they 
write. And in very high spirits Major Pendennis went to call 
upon Doctor Portman at the Deanery, and told him what happy 
discoveries he had made on the previous night. As they sat 
in confidential conversation in the Dean’s oak breakfast parlor 
they could look across the lawn and see Captain Costigan’s 
window, at which poor Pen had been only too visible some 
three weeks since. The Doctor was most indignant against 
Mrs. Creed, the landlady, for her duplicity, in concealing Sir 
Derby Oak’s constant visits to her lodgers, and threatened to 
excommunicate her out of the Cathedral. But the war } 7 Major 
thought that all things were for the best ; and, having taken 
counsel with himself over night, felt himself quite strong 
enough to go and face Captain Costigan. 

“ I’m going to fight the dragon,” he said, with a laugh, to 
Doctor Portman. 

“ And I shrive you, sir, and bid good fortune go with you,” 
answered the Doctor. Perhaps he and Mrs. Portman and Miss 
Mira, as they sat with their friend, the Dean’s lady, in her 
drawing-room, looked up more than once at the enemy’s win- 
dow to see if they could perceive any signs of the combat, 



THE GENERAL’S SALUTATION OF THE MAJOR, 






PENDENNIS. 


10 5 

The Major walked round, according to the directions given 
him, and soon found Mrs. Creed’s little door. He passed it, 
and as he ascended to Captain Costigan’s apartment, he could 
hear a stamping of feet, and a great shouting of “ Ha, ha ! ” 
within. 

“ It’s Sir Derby Oaks taking his fencing lesson,” said the 
child, who piloted Major Pendennis. “ He takes it Mondays, 
Wednesdays, and Fridays.” 

The Major knocked, and at length a tall gentleman came 
forth, with a foil and mask in one hand, and a fencing glove on 
the other. 

Pendennis made him a deferential bow. “ I believe I have 
the honor of speaking to Captain Costigan — My name is 
Major Pendennis.” 

The Captain brought his weapon up to the salute, and 
said, “ Major, the honer is moine ; I’m deloighted to see ye.” 


CHAPTER XI. 

NEGOTIATION. 

The Major and Captain Costigan were old soldiers and 
accustomed to face the enemy, so we may presume that they 
retained their presence of mind perfectly : but the rest of the 
party assembled in Cos’s sitting-room were, perhaps, a little 
flurried at Pendennis’s apparition. Miss Fotheringay’s slow 
heart began to beat no doubt, for her cheek flushed up with a 
great healthy blush, as Lieutenant Sir Derby Oaks looked at 
her with a scowl. The little crooked old man in the window- 
seat, who had been witnessing the fencing-match between the 
two gentlemen (whose stamping and jumping had been such as 
to cause him to give up all attempts to continue writing the 
theatre music, in the copying of which he had been engaged) 
looked up eagerly towards the new-comer as the Major of the 
well-blacked boots entered the apartment, distributing the most 
graceful bows to everybody present. 

“Me daughter — me friend, Mr. Bows — me gallant young 
pupil and friend, I may call ’um, Sir Derby Oaks,” said Costi- 
gan, splendidly waving his hand, and pointing each of these 
individuals to the Major’s attention. “ In one moment, Meejor, 
I’m your humble servant,” and to dash into the little adjoining 


io6 


PENDENNIS . 


chamber where he slept, to give a twist to his lank hair with 
his hair-brush (a wonderful and ancient piece), to tear off his 
old stock and put on a new one which Emily had constructed 
for him, and to assume a handsome clean collar, and the new 
coat which had been ordered upon the occasion of Miss Foth- 
eringay’s benefit, was with the still active Costigan the work of 
a minute. 

After him Sir Derby entered, and presently emerged from 
the same apartment, where he also cased himself in his little 
shell-jacket, which fitted tightly upon the young officer’s big 
person ; and which he, and Miss Fotheringay, and poor Pen 
too, perhaps, admired prodigiously. 

Meanwhile conversation was engaged in between the actress 
and the new-comer ; and the usual remarks about the weather 
had been interchanged before Costigan re-entered in his new 
“ shoot,” as he called it. 

“I needn’t apologoize to ye, Meejor,” he said, in his richest 
and most courteous manner, “for receiving ye in me shirt- 
sleeves.” 

“ An o.ld soldier can’t be better employed than in teaching 
a young one the use of his sword,” answered the Major, gal- 
lantly. “ I remember in old times hearing that you could use 
yours pretty well, Captain Costigan.” 

“ YVhat, ye’ve heard of Jack Costigan, Major,” said the 
other, greatly. 

The Major had, indeed ; he had pumped his nephew con- 
cerning his new friend, the Irish officer ; and said that he per- 
fectly well recollected meeting Mr. Costigan, and hearing him 
sing at Sir Richard Strachan’s table at Walcheren. 

At this information, and the bland and cordial manner in 
which it was conveyed, Bows looked up, entirely puzzled. 
“ But we will talk of these matters another time,” the Major 
continued, perhaps not wishing to commit himself ; “ it is to 
Miss Fotheringay that I came to pay my respects to-day: ” and 
he performed another bow for her, so courtly and gracious, that 
if she had been a duchess he could not have made it more 
handsome. 

“ I had heard* of your performances from my nephew, 
madam,” the Major said, “who raves about you, as I believe 
you know pretty well. But Arthur is but a boy, and a wild 
enthusiastic young fellow, whose opinions one must not take 
au pied de la lettre ; and I confess I was anxious to judge for 
myself. Permit me to say your performance delighted and as- 
tonished me. I have seen our best actresses, and, on my word, 


PENDENNIS. 


107 

1 think you surpass them all. You are as majestic as Mrs. 
Siddons.” 

“ Faith, I always said so,” Costigan said, winking at his 
daughter : “ Major, take a chair.” Milly rose at this hint, took 
an unripped satin garment off the only vacant seat, and 
brought the latter to Major Pendennis with one of her finest 
curtseys. 

“ You are as pathetic as Miss O’Neill,” he continued, bow- 
ing and seating himself ; “ your snatches of song remind me of 
Mrs. Jordan in her best time, when we were young men, Cap- 
tain Costigan ; and your manner reminded me of Mars. Did 
you ever see the Mars, Miss Fotheringay ? ” 

“There was two Mahers in Crow Street,” remarked Miss 
Emily : “ Fanny was well enough, but Biddy was no great 
things.” 

“ Sure, the Major means the god of war, Milly, my dear,” 
interposed the parent. 

“ It is not that Mars I meant, though Venus, I suppose, may 
be pardoned for thinking about him ; ” the Major replied with 
a smile directed in full to Sir Derby Oaks, who now re-entered 
in his shell-jacket, but the lady did not understand the words 
of which he made use, nor did the compliment at all pacify 
Sir Derby, who, probably, did not understand it either, and at 
any rate received it with great sulkiness and stiffness ; scowl- 
ing uneasily at Miss Fotheringay, with an expression which 
seemed to ask what the deuce does this man here ? 

Major Pendennis was not in the least annoyed by the 
gentleman’s ill-humor. On the contrary, it delighted him. 
“ So,” thought he, “ a rival is in the field and he offered up 
vows that Sir Derby might be, not only a rival, but a winner 
too, in this love-match in which he and Pen were engaged. 

“ I fear I interrupted your fencing lesson ; but my stay in 
Chatteris is very short, and I was anxious to make myself 
known to my old fellow-campaigner Captain Costigan, and to 
see a lady nearer who had charmed me so much from the stage. 
I was not the only man epris last night, Miss Fotheringay (if I 
must call you so, though your own family name is a very an- 
cient and noble one). There was a reverend friend of mine, 
who went home in raptures with Ophelia ; and I saw Sir Derby 
Oaks fling a bouquet which no actress ever merited better. I 
should have brought one myself, had I known what I was go- 
ing to see. Are not those the very flowers in a glass of water 
on the mantel-piece yonder ?” 

“Iam very fond of flowers,” said Miss Fotheringay, with 


io8 


PENDENNIS ; 


a languishing ogle at Sir Derby Oaks — but the Baronet still 
scowled sulkily. 

“Sweets to the sweet — isn’t that the expression of the 
play ? ” Major Pendennis asked, bent upon being good- 
humored. 

“ ’Pon my life, I don’t know. Very likely it is. I ain’t 
much of a literary man,” answered Sir Derby. 

“Is it possible ?” the Major continued, with an air of sur- 
prise. “ You don’t inherit your father’s love of letters, then, 
Sir Derby ? He was a remarkably fine scholar, and I had the 
honor of knowing him very well.” 

“ Indeed,” said the other, and gave a sulky wag of his head. 

“ He saved my life,” continued Pendennis. 

“ Did he now ? ” cried Miss Fotheringay, rolling her eyes 
first upon the Major with surprise, then towards Sir Derby 
with gratitude — but the latter was proof against those glances ; 
and far from appearing to be pleased that the Apothecary, his 
father, should have saved Major Pendennis’s life, the young 
man actually looked as if he wished the event had turned the 
other way. 

“ My father, I believe, was a very good doctor,” the young 
gentleman said by way of reply. “ I’m not in that line myself. 
I wish you good-morning, sir. I’ve got an appointment — Cos, 
by-bye — Miss Fotheringay, good morning,” and in spite of 
the young lady’s imploring looks and appealing smiles, the 
Dragoon bowed stiffly out of the room, and the clatter of his 
sabre was heard as he strode down the creaking stair ; and the 
angry tones of his voice as he cursed little Tom Creed, who 
was disporting in the passage, and whose peg-top Sir Derby 
kicked away with an oath into the street. 

The Major did not smile in the least, though he had every 
reason to be amused. “ Monstrous handsome young man that 
— as fine a looking soldier as ever I saw,” he said to Costigan. 

“ A credit to the army and to human nature in general ; 
answered Costigan. “ A young man of refoined manners, 
polite affabilitee, and princely fortune. His table is sumptu- 
ous : he’s adawr’d in the regiment : and he rides sixteen stone.” 

“A perfect champion,” said the Major, laughing. “ I have 
no doubt all the ladies admire him.” 

“ He’s very well, in spite of his weight, now he’s young,” 
said Milly ; “ but he’s no conversation.” 

“ He’s best on horseback,” Mr. Bows said ; on which Milly 
replied, that the Baronet had ridden third in the steeple-chase 
on his horse Tareaways, and the Major began to comprehend 


PE ND E NN IS. 


T0 9 

that the young lady herself was not of a particular genius, and 
to wonder how she could be so stupid and act so well. 

Costigan, with Irish hospitality, of course pressed refresh' 
ment upon his guest : and the Major, who was no more hungry 
than you are after a Lord Mayor’s dinner, declared that he 
should like a biscuit and a glass of wine above all things, as 
he felt quite faint from long fasting — but he knew that to re- 
ceive small kindnesses flatters the donors very much, and that 
people must needs grow well disposed towards you as they give 
you their hospitality. 

“ Some of the old Madara, Milly, love,” Costigan said, 
winking to his child — and that lady, turning to her father a 
glance of intelligence, went out of the room, and down the stair, 
where she softly summoned her little emissary Master Tommy 
Creed : and giving him a piece of money, ordered him to go 
buy a pint of Madara wine at the Grapes, and sixpennyworth 
of sorted biscuits at the baker’s, and to return in a hurry, when 
he might have two biscuits for himself. 

Whilst Tommy Creed was gone on this errand, Miss Costi- 
gan sat below with Mrs. Creed, telling her landlady how Mr. 
Arthur Pendennis’s uncle, the Major, was above stairs ; a nice, 
soft-spoken old gentleman ; that butter wouldn’t melt in his 
mouth : and how Sir Derby had gone out of the room in a rage 
of jealousy, and thinking what must be done to pacify both of 
them. 

“ She keeps the keys of the cellar, Major,” said Mr. Cos- 
tigan, as the girl left the room. 

“ Upon my word you have a very beautiful butler,” answered 
Pendennis, gallantly, “ and I don’t wonder at the young fel- 
lows raving about her. When we were of their age, Captain 
Costigan, I think plainer women would have done our busi- 
ness.” 

“ Faith, and ye may say that, sir — and lucky is the man who 
gets her. Ask me friend Bob Bows here whether Miss Fother- 
ingay’s moind is not even shuparior to her person, and whether 
she does not possess a cultiveated intellect, a refoined under- 
standing, and an emiable disposition ? ” 

“ O, of course,” said Mr. Bows, rather dryly. “ Here comes 
Hebe blushing from the cellar. Don’t you think it is time to 
go to rehearsal, Miss Hebe ? You will be fined if you are 
late ” — and he gave the young lady a look, which intimated 
that they had much better leave the room and the two elders 
together. 

At this order Miss Hebe took up her bonnet and shawl. 


no 


PENDENNIS. 


looking uncommonly pretty, good-humored, and smiling : and 
Bows gathered up his roll of papers, and hobbled across the 
room for his hat and cane. 

“ Must you go ? ” said the Major. “ Can’t you give us a few 
minutes more, Miss Fotheringay ? Before you leave us, per- 
mit an old fellow to shake you by the hand, and believe that I 
am proud to have had the honor of making your acquaintance, 
and am most sincerely anxious to be your friend.” 

Miss Fotheringay made a low curtsey at the conclusion of 
this gallant speech, and the Major followed her retreating steps 
to the door, where he squeezed her hand with the kindest and 
most paternal pressure. Bows was puzzled with this exhibition 
of cordiality : “ The lad’s relatives can’t be really wanting to 
marry him to her,” he thought — and so they departed. 

“ Now for it,” thought Major Pendennis ; and as for Mr. 
Costigan he profited instantaneously by his daughter’s absence 
to drink up the rest of the wine ; and tossed off one bumper 
after another of the Madeira from the Grapes, with an eager 
shaking hand. The Major came up to the table, and took up 
his glass and drained it with a jovial smack. If it had been 
Lord Steyne’s particular, and not public-house Cape, he could 
not have appeared to relish it more. 

“ Capital Madeira, Captain Costigan,” he said. “ Where do 
you get it ? I drink the health of that charming creature in a 
bumper. Faith, Captain, I don’t wonder that the men are wild 
about her. I never saw such eyes in my life, or such a grand 
manner. I am sure she is as intellectual as she is beautiful ; 
and I have no doubt she’s as good as she is clever.” 

“ A good girl, sir, — a good girl, sir,” said the delighted father ; 
“ and I pledge a toast to her with all my heart. Shall I send 
to the — to the cellar for another pint? It’s handy by. No? 
Well, indeed sir, ye may say she is a good girl, and the pride 
and glory of her father — honest old Jack Costigan. The man 
who gets her will have a jew’l to a wife, sir ; and I drink his 
health, sir, and ye know who I mean, Major.” 

“ I am not surprised at young or old falling in love with 
her,” said the Major, “ and frankly must tell you, that though I 
was very angry with my poor nephew Arthur, when I heard of 
the boy’s passion — now I have seen the lady 1 can pardon him 
any extent of it. By George, I should like to enter for the race 
myself, if I weren’t an old fellow and a poor one.” 

“And no better man, Major, I’m sure,” cried Jack enrap- 
tured. “ Your friendship, sir, delights me. Your admiration 
for my girl brings tears to me eyes — tears, sir — manlee tears — 


PENDENNIS . 


HI 


and when she leaves me humble home for your own more 
splendid mansion, I hope she’ll keep a place for her poor old 
father, poor old Jack Costigan.” — The Captain suited the ac- 
tion to the word, and his bloodshot eyes were suffused with 
water, as he addressed the Major. 

“Your sentiments do you honor,” the other said. “But, 
Captain Costigan, I can’t help smiling at one thing you have 
just said.” 

“And what’s that, sir?” asked Jack, who was at a too 
heroic and sentimental pitch to descend from it. 

“ You were speaking about our splendid mansion — my 
sister’s house, I mean.” 

“ I mane the park and mansion of Arthur Pendennis, Esq., 
of Fairoaks Park, whom I hope to see a Mimber of Parliament 
for his native town of Clavering, when he is of ege to take that 
responsible stetion,” cried the Captain with much dignity. 

The Major smiled. “ Fairoaks Park, my dear sir ! ” he 
said. Do you know our history ? We are of excessively ancient 
family certainly, but I began life with scarce enough money to 
purchase my commission, and my eldest brother was a country 
apothecary : who made every shilling he died possessed of out 
of his pestle and mortar.” 

“ I have consented to waive that objection, sir,” said Costi- 
gan majestically, “ in consideration of the known respectability 
of your family.” 

“ Curse your impudence,” thought the Major ; but he only 
smiled and bowed. 

“ The Costigans, too, have met with misfortunes ; and our 
house of Castle Costigan is by no manes what it was. I have 
known very honest men apothecaries, sir, and there’s some in 
Dublin that has had the honor of dining at the Lord Leftenant’s 
teeble.” 

“You are very kind to give us the benefit of your charity,” 
the Major continued : “but permit me to say that is not the 
question. You spoke just now of my little nephew as heir of 
Fairoaks Park, and I don’t know what besides.” 

“ Funded property, I’ve no doubt, Meejor, and something 
handsome eventually from yourself.” 

“ My good sir, I tell you the boy is the son of a country 
apothecary,” cried out Major Pendennis ; “ and that when he 
comes of age he won’t have a shilling.” 

“ Pooh, Major, you’re laughing at me,” said Mr. Costigan, 
me young friend, I make no doubt, is heir to two thousand 
pounds a year.” 




I 12 


PENDENNIS. 


“Two thousand fiddlesticks!^ I beg your pardon, my dear 
sir ; but has the boy been humbugging you ? — it is not his habit. 
Upon my word and honor, as a gentleman and an executor to 
my brother’s will too, he left little more than five hundred a 
year behind him.” 

“And with aconomy, a handsome sum of money too, sir,” 
the Captain answered. “ Faith, I’ve known a man drink his 
clar’t, and drive his coach-and-four on five hundred a year and 
strict aconomy, in Ireland, sir. We’ll manage on it, sir — trust 
Jack Costigan for that.” 

“ My dear Captain Costigan — I give you my word that my 
brother did not leave a shilling to his son Arthur. 

“ Are ye joking with me, Meejor Pendennis ? ” cried Jack 
Costigan. “ Are ye thrifling with the feelings of a father and 
a gentleman ? ” 

“ I am telling you the honest truth,” said Major Pendennis. 
“ Every shilling my brother had, he left to his widow : with a 
partial reversion, it is true, to the boy. But she is a young 
woman, and may marry if he offends her — or she may outlive 
him, for she comes of an uncommonly long-lived family. And 
I ask you, as a gentleman and a man of the world, what allow- 
ance can my sister, Mrs. Pendennis, make to her son out of five 
hundred a year, which is all her fortune — that shall enable him 
to maintain himself and your daughter in the rank befitting such 
an accomplished young lady ? ” 

“ Am I to understand, sir, that the young gentleman, your 
nephew, and whom I have fosthered and cherished as the son 
of me bosom,, is an imposther who has been thrifling with the 
affections of me beloved child ? ” exclaimed the General, with 
an outbreak of wrath. “ Have a care, sir, how you thrifle with 
the honor of John Costigan. If I thought any mortal man 
meant to do so, be heavens I’d have his blood, sir — were he old 
or young.” 

“ Mr. Costigan ! ” cried out the Major. 

“ Mr. Costigan can protect his own and his daughter’s 
honor, and will, sir,” said the other. “ Look at that chest of 
dthrawers, it contains heaps of letthers that that viper has 
addressed to that innocent child. There’s promises there, sir, 
enough to fill a bandbox with ; and when I have dragged the 
scoundthrel before the Courts of Law, and shown up his perjury 
and his dishonor, I have another remedy in yondther mahogany 
case, sir, which shall set me right, sir, with any individual — ye 
mark me words, Major Pendennis — with any individual who has 
counselled your nephew to insult a soldier and a gentleman. 




PENDENNIS. 


x *3 

What ? Me daughter to be jilted, and me gray hairs dishonored 
by an apothecary’s son ! By the laws of Heaven, sir, I should 
like to see the man that shall do it.” 

“ I am to understand then that you threaten in the first 
place to publish the letters of a boy of eighteen to a woman of 
eight-and-twenty : and afterwards to do me the honor of calling 
me out,” the Major said, still with perfect coolness. 

“ You have described my intentions with perfect accuracy, 
Meejor Pendennis,” answered the Captain, as he pulled his 
ragged whiskers over his chin. 

“ Well, well ; these shall be the subjects of future arrange- 
ments, but before we come to powder and ball, my good sirY- 
do have the kindness to think with yourself in what earthly 
way I have injured you ? I have told you that my nephew is 
dependent upon his mother, who has scarcely more than five 
hundred a year.” 

“ I have my own opinion of the correctness of that asser- 
tion,” said the Captain. 

“ Will you go to my sister’s lawyers, Messrs. Tatham here, 
and satisfy yourself ? ” 

“ I decline to meet those gentlemen,” said the Captain, with 
rather a disturbed air. “ If it be as you say, I have been 
athrociously deceived by some one, and on that person I’ll be 
revenged.” 

“ Is it my nephew ? ” cried the Major, starting up and put- 
ting on his hat. “ Did he ever tell you that his property was 
two thousand a year ? If he did, I’m mistaken in the boy. To 
tell lies has not been a habit in our family, Mr. Costigan, and I 
don’t think my brother’s son has learned it as yet. Try and 
consider whether you have not deceived yourself ; or adopted 
extravagant reports from hearsay. As for me, sir, you are at 
liberty to understand that I am not afraid of all the Costigans 
in Ireland, and know quite well how to defend myself against 
any threats from any quarter. I come here as the boy’s guardian 
to protest against a marriage, most absurd and unequal, that 
cannot but bring poverty and misery with it : and in preventing 
it I conceive I am quite as much your daughter’s friend (who I 
have no doubt is an honorable young lady), as the friend of my 
own family : and prevent the marriage I yvill, sir, by every 
means in my power. There, I have said my say, sir.” 

“ But I have not said mine, Major Pendennis — and ye shall 
hear more from me,” Mr. Costigan said, with a look of tremen- 
dous severity. 

“ ’Sdeath, sir, what do you mean ? the Major asked, turning 
8 


PENDENNIS. 


114 

round on the threshold of the door, and looking the intrepid 
Costigan in the face. 

56 Ye said, in the course of conversation, that ye were at the 
George Hotel, I think,” Mr. Costigan said in a stately manner. 
“ A friend shall wait upon ye there before ye leave town, sir.” 

“ Let him make haste, Mr. Costigan,” cried out the Major, 
almost beside himself with rage. • “ I wish you a good-morning, 
sir.” And Captain Costigan bowed a magnificent bow of de- 
fiance to Major Pendennis over the landing-place as the latter 
retreated down the stairs. 


CHAPTER XII. 

IN WHICH A SHOOTING MATCH IS PROPOSED. 

Early mention has been made in this history of Mr 
Garbetts, Principal Tragedian, a promising and athletic young 
actor, or jovial habits and irregular inclinations, between 
whom and Mr. Costigan there was a considerable intimacy. 
They were the chief ornaments of the convivial club held at the 
Magpie Hotel ; they helped each other in various bill transac- 
tions in which they had been engaged, with the mutual loan of 
each other’s valuable signatures. They were friends, in fine ; 
and Mr. Garbetts was called in by Captain Costigan immediately 
after Major Pendennis had quitted the house, as a friend proper 
to be consulted at the actual juncture. He was a large man, 
with a loud voice and fierce aspect, who had the finest legs of 
the whole company, and could break a poker in mere sport 
across his stalwart arm. 

44 Run, Tommy,” said Mr. Costigan to the little messenger, 
“ and fetch Mr. Garbetts from his lodgings over the tripe shop, 
ye know, and tell ’em to send two glasses of whiskey-and-water. 
hot, from the Grapes.” So Tommy went his way ; and pres- 
ently Mr. Garbetts and the whiskey came. 

Captain Costigan did not disclose to him the whole of the 
previous events, of which the reader is in possession • but, with 
the red of the spirits and water, he composed a letter of r. 
threatening nature to Major Pendennis’s address, in which he 
called upon that gentleman to offer no hindrance to the marriage 
projected between Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his daughter 
Miss Fotheringay, and to fix an early day for its celebration : 


PENDENNIS . 


XI 5 

or, in any other case, to give him the satisfaction which was 
usual between gentlemen of honor. And should Major Pen- 
dennis be disinclined to this alternative, the Captain hinted, 
that he would force him to accept it by the use of a horsewhip, 
which he should employ upon the Major’s person. The precise 
terms of this letter we cannot give, for reasons which shall be 
specified presently ; but it was, no doubt, couched in the 
Captain’s finest style, and sealed elaborately with the great 
silver seal of the Costigans — the only bit of the family plate 
which the Captain possessed. 

Garbetts was despatched, then, with this message and letter ; 
and bidding Heaven bless ’um, the General squeezed his am- 
bassador’s hand, and saw him depart. Then he took down 
his venerable and murderous duelling-pistols, with flint locks, 
that had done the business of many a pretty fellow in Dublin : 
and having examined these, and seen that they were in a satis- 
factory condition, he brought from the drawer all Pen’s letters 
and poems which he kept there, and which he always read 
before he permitted his Emily to enjoy their perusal. 

In a score of minutes Garbetts came back with an anxious 
and crestfallen countenance. 

“ Ye’ve seen ’um ? ” the Captain said. 

“ Why, yes,” said Garbetts. 

“ And when is it for ? ” asked Costigan, trying the lock of 
one of the ancient pistols, and bringing it to a level with his oi 
— as he called that bloodshot orb. 

“ When is what for? ” asked Mr. Garbetts. 

t: The meeting, my dear fellow ? ” 

“ You don’t mean to say you mean mortal combat, Cap- 
tain ? ” Garbetts said, aghast. 

“ What the devil else do I mean, Garbetts ? — I want to shoot 
that man that has trajuiced me honor, or meself dthrop a victim 
on the sod.” 

“ D — if I carry challenges,” Mr. Garbetts replied. “ I’m 
a family man, Captain, and will have nothing to do with pistols 
— take back your letter ; ” and, to the surprise and indignation 
of Captain Costigan, his emissary flung the letter down, with 
its great sprawling superscription and blotched seal. 

“ Ye don’t mean to say ye saw ’um and didn’t give ’um the 
letter ? ” cried out the Captain, in a fury. 

“ I saw him, but I could not have speech with him, Captain,” 
said Mr. Garbetts. 

“ And why the devil not ? ” asked the other. 

fC There was one there I cared not to meet, nor would you,” 


PENDENNIS. 


1 1 6 

the tragedian answered in a sepulchral voice. “ The minion 
Tatham was there, Captain.” 

“ The cowardly scoundthrel ! ” roared Costigan. “ He’s 
frightened, and already going to swear the peace against me.” 

“ I’ll have nothing to do with the fighting, mark that,” the 
tragedian doggedly said, “ and I wish I’d not seen Tatham 
neither, nor that bit of ” 

“ Hold your tongue ! Bob Acres. It’s my belief ye’re no 
better than a coward,” said Captain Costigan, quoting Sir 
Lucius O’Trigger, which character he had performed with 
credit, both off and on the stage, and after some more parley 
between the couple they separated in not very good-humor. 

Their colloquy has been here condensed, as the reader 
knows the main point upon which it turned. But the latter 
will now see how it is impossible to give a correct account of 
the letter which the Captain wrote to Major Pendennis, as it 
was never opened at all by that gentleman. 

When Miss Costigan came home from rehearsal, which she 
did in the company of the faithful Mr. Bows, she found her 
father pacing up and down their apartment in a great state of 
agitation, and in the midst of a powerful odor of 'spirits and 
water, which, as it appeared, had not succeeded in pacifying 
his disordered mind. The Pendennis papers were on the table 
surrounding the empty goblets and now useless teaspoon, which 
had served to hold and mix the Captain’s liquor and his friend’s. 
As Emily entered he seized her in his arms, and cried out, 
“ Prepare yourself, me child, me blessed child,” in a voice of 
agony, and with eyes brimful of tears. 

“Ye’re tipsy again, Papa,” Miss Fotheringay said, pushing 
back her sire. “ Ye promised me ye wouldn’t take spirits before 
dinner.” 

“ It’s to forget me sorrows, me poor girl, that I’ve taken 
just a drop,” cried the bereaved father — “ it’s to drown me care 
that I drain the bowl.” 

“Your care takes a deal of drowning, Captain dear,” said 
Bows, mimicking his friend’s accent ; “ what has happened ? 
Has that soft-spoken gentleman in the wig been vexing you ? ” 

“ The oily miscreant ! I’ll have his blood ! ” roared Cos. 
Miss Milly, it must be premised, had fled to her room out of 
his embrace, and was taking off her bonnet and shawl there. 

“ I thought he meant mischief. He was so uncommon civil,” 
the other said. “ What has he come to say ? ” 

“ O Bows ! He has overwhellum’d me,” the Captain said. 
“ There’s a hellish conspiracy on foot against me poor girl ; 


PENDENNIS. 


117 

and it’s me opinion that both them Pendennises, nephew and 
uncle, is two infernal thrators and scoundthrels, who should be 
conshumed from off the face of the earth.” 

u What is it? What has happened ? ” said Mr. Bows, grow- 
ing rather excited. 

Costigan then told him the Major’s statement that the young 
Pendennis had not two thousand, nor two hundred pounds a 
year ; and expressed his fury that he should have permitted 
such an impostor to coax and wheedle his innocent girl, and 
that he should have nourished such a viper in his own personal 
bosom. “I have shaken the reptile from me, however,” said 
Costigan ; “and as for his uncle, I’ll have such a revenge on 
that old man, as shall make ’um rue the day he ever insulted a 
Costigan.” 

“ What do you mean, General ? ” said Bows. 

“ I mean to have his life, Bows — his villanous, skulking life, 
my boy ; ” and he rapped upon the battered old pistol-case in 
an ominous and savage manner. Bows had often heard him 
appeal to that box of death, with which he proposed to sacrifice 
his enemies ; but the Captain did not tell him that he had 
actually written and sent a challenge to Major Pendennis, and 
Mr. Bows therefore rather disregarded the pistols in the present 
instance. 

At this juncture Miss Fotheringay returned to the common 
sitting-room from her private apartment, looking perfectly 
healthy, happy, and unconcerned, a striking and wholesome 
contrast to her father, who was in a delirious tremor of grief, 
anger, and other agitation. She brought in a pair of ex-white 
satin shoes with her, which she proposed to rub as clean as 
might be with bread-crumb ; intending to go mad with them 
upon next Tuesday evening in Ophelia, -in which character she 
was to reappear on that night. 

She looked at the papers on the table ; stopped as if she was 
going to ask a question, but thought better of it, and going to 
the cupboard, selected an eligible piece of bread wherewith she 
might operate on the satin slippers : and afterwards coming 
back to the table, seated herself there commodiously with the 
shoes, and then asked her father, in her honest Irish brogue, 
“ What have ye got them letthers, and pothry, and stuff, of 
Master Arthur’s out for, Pa ? Sure ye don’t want to be reading- 
over that nonsense.” 

“ O Emilee ! ” cried the Captain, “ that boy whom I loved 
as the boy of mee bosom is only a scoundthrel, and a deceiver, 
mee poor girl : ” and he looked in the most tragical way at Mr. 


P&NDENNIS. 


1 18 

Bows, opposite ; who, in his turn, gazed somewhat anxiously at 
Miss Costigan. 

“ He ! pooh ! Sure the poor lad’s as simple as a school- 
boy,” she said. “ All them children write verses and non- 
sense.” 

“ He’s been acting the part of a viper to this fireside, and a 
traitor in this familee,” cried the Captain. “ I tell ye he’s no 
better than an impostor.” 

“ What has the poor fellow done, Papa ? ” asked Emily. 

“ Done ? He has deceived us in the most athrocious man- 
ner,” Miss Emily’s papa said. “ He has thrifled with your 
affections, and outraged my own fine feelings. He has repre- 
sented himself as a man of property, and it turruns out that he 
is no betther than a beggar. Haven’t I often told ye he had 
two thousand a year ? He’s a pauper, I tell ye, Miss Costigan ; 
a depindent upon the bountee of his mother ; a good woman, 
who may marry again, who’s likely to live forever, and who has 
but five hundred a year. How dar he ask ye to marry into a 
family which has not the means of providing for ye ? Ye’ve 
been grossly deceived and put upon, Milly, and it’s my belief 
his old ruffian of an uncle in a wig is in the plot against us.” 

“ That soft old gentleman ? What has he been doing, 
Papa ? ” continued Emily, still imperturbable. 

Costigan informed Milly that when she was gone, Major 
Pendennis told him in his double-faced Pall Mall polite manner, 
that young Arthur had no fortune at all, that the Major had 
asked him (Costigan) to go to the lawyers (“ wherein he knew 
the scoundthrels have a bill of mine, and I can’t meet them,” 
the Captain parenthetically remarked), and see the lad’s father’s 
will : and finally, that an infernal swindle had been practised 
upon him by the pair, and that he was resolved either on a 
marriage, or on the blood of both of them. 

Milly looked very grave and thoughtful, rubbing the white 
satin shoe. “ Sui«, if he’s no money, there’s no use marrying 
him, Papa,” she said, sententiously. 

“ Why did the villain say he was a man of prawpertee ? ” 
asked Costigan. 

“ The poor fellow always said he was poor,” answered the 
girl. “ Twas you who would have it he was rich, Papa — and 
made me agree to take him.” 

“ He should have been explicit and told us his income, 
Milly,” answered the father. “ A young fellow who rides a 
blood mare, and makes presents of shawls and bracelets, is an 
impostor if he has no money ; — and as for his uncle, bedad I’ll 


PENDENN1S. 


n 9 

pull off his wig whenever I see ’um. Bows, here, shall take a 
message to him and tell him so. Either it’s a marriage, or he 
meets me in the field like a man, or I tweak ’um on the nose in 
front of his hotel or in the gravel walks of Fairoaks Park before 
all the county, bedad.” 

“ Bedad, you may send somebody else with the message,” 
said Bows, laughing.- “ I’m a fiddler, not a fighting man, Cap- 
tain.” 

“ Pooh, you’ve no spirit, sir,” roared the General. “ I’ll be 
my own second, if no one will stand by and see me injured. 
And I’ll take my case of pistols and shoot ’um in the Coffee- 
Room of the George.” 

“And so poor Arthur has no money?” sighed out Miss 
Costigan, rather plaintively. “ Poor lad, he was a good lad 
too : wild and talking nonsense, with his verses and pothry and 
that, but a brave, generous boy, and indeed I liked him — and 
he liked me too,” she added, rather softly, and rubbing away at 
the shoe. 

“ Why don’t you marry him if you like him so ? ” Mr. 
Bows said, rather savagely. “ He is not more than ten years 
younger than you are. His mother may relent, and you might 
go and live and have enough at Fairoaks Park. Why not go 
and be a lady ? I could go on with the fiddle, and the General 
live on his half-pay. Why don’t you marry him ? You know 
he likes you.” 

“ There’s others that likes me as well, Bows, that has no 
money and that’s old enough,” Miss Milly said sententiously. 

“ Yes, d it,” said Bows, with a bitter curse — “ that are 

old enough and poor enough and fools enough for anything.” 

“There’s old fools, and young fools too. You’ve often said 
so, you silly man,” the imperious beauty said, with a conscious 
glance at the old gentleman. “ If Pendennis has not enough 
money to live upon, it’s folly to talk about marrying him : and 
that’s the long and short of it.” 

“ And the boy ? ” said Mr. Bows. “ By Jove ! you throw 
a man away like an old glove, Miss Costigan.” 

“ I don’t know what you mean, Bows,” said Miss Fotherin- 
gay, placidly, rubbing the second shoe. “ If he had had half 
of the two thousand a year that Papa gave him, or the half of 
that, I would marry him. But what is the good of taking on 
with a beggar ? We’re poor enough already. There’s no use 
in my going to live with an old lady that’s testy and cross, may- 
be, and would grudge me every morsel of meat (sure, it’s 
near dinner time, and Suky not laid the cloth yet), and then,” 


120 


PENDENNIS. 


added Miss Costigan, quite simply, “ suppose there was a 
family ?— why, Papa, we shouldn’t be as well off as we are now.” 

“ ’Deed then, you would not, Milly dear,” answered the 
father. 

“ And there’s an end to all the fine talk about Mrs. Arthui 
Pendennis of Fairoaks Park — the member of Parliament’s 
lady,” said Milly, with a laugh. “ Pretty carriages and horses 
we should have to ride ! — that you were always talking about, 
Papa. But it’s always the same. If a man looked at me, you 
fancied he was going to marry me ; and if he had a good coat, 
you fancied he was as rich as Crazes.” 

“ As Croesus,” said Mr. Bows. 

“ Well, call ’um what ye like. But it’s a fact now that Papa 
has married me these eight years a score of times. Wasn’t I 
to be my Lady Poldoody of Oystherstown Castle ? Then there 
was the Navy Captain at Portsmouth, and the old surgeon at 
Norwich, and the Methodist preacher here last year, and who 
knows how many more ? Well, I bet a penny, with all your 
scheming, I shall die Milly Costigan at last. So poor little 
Arthur has no money ? Stop and take dinner, Bows : we’ve a 
beautiful beef-steak pudding.” 

“ I wonder whether she is on with Sir Derby Oaks,” thought 
Bows, whose eyes and thoughts were always watching her. 
“ The dodges of women beat all comprehension ; and I am 
sure she wouldn’t let the lad off so easily, if she had not some 
other scheme on hand.” 

It will have been perceived that Miss Fotheringay, though 
silent in general, and by no means brilliant as a conversationist 
where poetry, literature, or the fine arts were concerned, could 
talk freely and with good sense, too, in her own family circle. 
She cannot justly be called a romantic person : nor were her 
literary acquirements great : she never opened a Shakspeare 
from the day she left the stage, nor, indeed, understood it during 
all the time she adorned the boards : but about a pudding, a 
piece of needle-work, or her own domestic affairs, she was as 
good a judge as could be found ; and not being misled by a 
strong imagination or a passionate temper, was better enabled 
to keep her judgment cool. When, over their dinner, Costigan 
tried to convince himself and the company, that the Major’s 
statement regarding Pen’s finances was unworthy of credit, and 
a mere ruse upon the old hypocrite’s part so as to induce them, 
on their side, to break off the match, Miss Milly would not, for 
a moment, admit the possibility of deceit on the side of the 
adversary : and pointed out clearly that it was her father who 


PENDENNIS. 


21 


had deceived himself, and not poor little Pen, who had tried 
to take them in. As for that poor lad, she said she pitied him 
with all her heart. And she ate an exceedingly good dinner ; 
to the admiration of Mr. Bows, who had a remarkable regard 
and contempt for this woman, during and after which repast, 
the party devised upon the best means of bringing this love- 
matter to a close. As for Costigan, his idea of tweaking the 
Major’s nose vanished with his supply of after-dinner whiskey- 
and-water : and he was submissive to his daughter, and ready 
for any plan on which she might decide, in order to meet the 
crisis which she saw was at hand. 

The Captain, who, as long as he had a notion that he was 
wronged, was eager to face and demolish both Pen and his 
uncle, perhaps shrank from the idea of meeting the former, and 
asked “ what the juice they were to say to the lad if he re- 
mained steady to his engagement, and they broke from theirs? ” 
“ What ? don’t you know how to throw a man over ? ” said Bows • 
“ ask a woman to tell you ; ” and Miss Fotheringay showed 
how this feat was to be done simply enough — nothing was more 
easy. “ Papa writes to Arthur to know what settlements he 
proposes to make in event of a marriage ; and asks what his 
means are. Arthur writes back and says what he’s got, and 
you’ll find it’s as the Major says, I’ll go bail. Then papa writes, 
and says it’s not enough, and the match had best be at an 
end.” 

“ And, of course, you enclose a parting line, in which you 
say you will always regard him as a brother ; ” said Mr. Bows 
eyeing her in this scornful way. 

“Of course, and so I shall,” answered Miss Fotheringay., 
He’s a most worthy young man, I’m sure. I’ll thank ye hand 
me the salt. Them filberts is beautiful.” 

“And there will be no noses pulled, Cos, my boy? I’m 
sorry you’re baulked,” said Mr. Bows. 

“ ’Dad, I suppose not,” said Cos, rubbing his own. — “What’ll 
ye do about them letters, and verses, and pomes, Milly, darling ? 
—Ye must send ’em back.” 

“Wigsby would give a hundred pound for ’em,” Bows said, 
with a sneer. 

“ ‘ Deed, then, he would,” said Captain Costigan, who was 
easily led. 

“ Papa ! ” said Miss Milly. — “ Ye wouldn’t be for not send- 
ing the poor boy his letters back ? Them letters and pomes is 
mine. They were very long, and full of all sorts of nonsense, 
and Latin, and things I couldn’t understand the half of ; indeed 


122 


PENDENNIS. 


I’ve not read ’em all ; but we’ll send ’em back to him when the 
proper time comes.” And going to a drawer, Miss Fotherin- 
gay took out from it a number of the County Chronicle and 
Chatteris Champion, in which Pen had written a copy of flaming 
verses celebrating her appearance in the character of Imogen, 
and putting by the leaf upon which the poem appeared (for. 
like ladies of her profession, she kept the favorable printed 
notices of her performances), she wrapped up Pen’s letters, 
poems, passions, and fancies, and tied them with’ a piece of 
string neatly, as she would a parcel of sugar. 

Nor was she in the least moved while performing this act. 
What hours the boy had passed over those papers ! What love 
and longing : what generous faith and manly devotion — what 
watchful nights and lonely fevers might they tell of ! She tied 
them up like so much grocery, and sat down and made tea 
afterwards with a perfectly placid and contented heart : while 
Pen was yearning after her ten miles off: and hugging her 
image to his soul. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

A CRISIS. 

Major Pendennis came away from his interview with Cap- 
tain Costigan in a state of such concentrated fury as rendered 
him terrible to approach. “ The impudent bog-rrotting scamp,” 
he thought, “ dare to threaten me! Dare to talk of permitting 
his damned Costigans to marry with the Pendennises ! Send 
me a challenge ! If the fellow can get anything in the shape 
of a gentleman to carry it, I have the greatest mind in life not 
to baulk him. — Psha ! what would people say if I were to go 
out with a tipsy mountebank, about a row with an actress in a 
bam ! ” So when Majo. saw Dr. Portman, who asked anxiously 
regarding the issue of his battle with the dragon, Mr. Pendennis 
did not care to inform the divine of the General’s insolent be- 
havior, but stated that the affair was a very ugly and disagree- 
ble one, and that it was by no means over yet. 

He enjoined Doctor and Mrs. Portman to say nothing about 
the business at Fairoaks ; and then he returned to his hotel, 
where he vented his wrath upon Mr. Morgan his valet, “ dammin 


PENDENNIS. 


123 


and cussin up stairs and down stairs,” as that gentleman ob- 
served to Mr. Foker’s man, in whose company he partook of 
dinner in the servants’ room of the George. 

The servant carried the news'to his master; and Mr. Foker 
having finished his breakfast about this time, it being two o’clock 
in the afternoon, remembered that he was anxious to know the 
result of the interview between his two friends, and having 
inquired the number of the Major’s sitting-room, went over in 
his brocade dressing-gown, and knocked for admission. 

The Major had some business, as he had stated, respecting 
a lease of the widow’s, about which he was desirous of consult- 
ing old Mr. Tatham, the lawyer, who had been his brother’s man 
of business, and who had a branch-office at Clavering, where he 
and his son attended market and other days three or four in 
the week. This gentleman and his client were now in consulta- 
tion when Mr. Foker showed his grand dressing-gown and em- 
broidered skull-cap at Major Pendennis’s door. 

Seeing the Major engaged with papers and red-tape, and an 
old man with a white head, the modest youth was for drawing 
back — and said, “ O, you’re busy — call again another time.” 
But Mr. Pendennis wanted to see him, and begged him, with a 
smile, to enter : whereupon Mr. Foker took off the embroidered 
tarboosh or fez (it had been worked by the fondest of mothers) 
and advanced, bowing to the gentlemen and smiling on them 
graciously. Mr. Tatham had never seen so splendid an appari- 
tion before as this brocaded youth, who seated himself in an 
arm-chair, spreading out his crimson skirts, and looking" with 
exceeding kindness and frankness on the other two tenants of 
the room. “You seem to like my dressing-gown, sir,” he said 
to Mr. Tatham. “ A pretty thing, isn’t it ? Neat, but not in the 
least gaudy. And how do you do ? Major Pendennis, sir, and 
how does the world treat you ? ” 

There was that in Foker’s manner and appearance which 
would have put an Inquisitor into good-humor, and it smoothed 
the wrinkles under Pendennis’s head of hair. 

“ I have had an interview with that Irishman, (you may 
speak before my friend, Mr. Tatham here, who knows all the 
affairs of the family,) and it has not, I own, been very satisfactory. 
He won t believe that my nephew is poor; he says we are both 
liars : he did me the honor to hint that I was a coward, as I 
took leave. And I thought when you knocked at the door, 
that you might be the gentleman whom I expect with a chal- 
lenge from Mr. Costigan — that is how the world treats me, Mr. 
Foker.” 


124 


PENDENNIS. 


“ You don’t mean that Irishman, the actress’s father ? ” cried 
Mr. Tatham, who was a dissenter himself, &nd did not patronize 
the drama. 

“ That Irishman, the actress’s father — the very man! Have 
not you heard what a fool my nephew has made of himself 
about the girl ? ” — and Major Pendennis had to recount the 
story of his nephew’s loves to the lawyer, Mr. Foker coming in 
with appropriate comments in his usual familiar language. 

Tatham was lost in wonder at the narrative. Why had not 
Mrs. Pendennis married a serious man, he thought — Mr. Tatham 
was a widower — and kept this unfortunate boy from perdition ? 
As for Miss Costigan, he would say nothing : her profession was 
sufficient to characterize her. Mr. Foker here interposed to 
say he had known some uncommon good people in the booths, 
as he called the Temple of the Muses. Well it might be so, 
Mr. Tatham hoped so — but the father, Tatham knew personally 
— a man of the worst character, a wine-bibber and an idler in 
taverns and billiard-rooms, and a notorious insolvent. “ I can 
understand the reason, Major,” he said, “why the fellow would 
not come to my office to ascertain the truth of the statements 
which you made him. — We have a writ out against him and an- 
other disreputable fellow, one of the play-actors, for a bill given 
to Mr. Skinner of this city, a most respectable Grocer and Wine 
and Spirit Merchant, and a Member of the Society of Friends. 
This Costigan came crying to Mr. Skinner, — crying in the shop, 
sir, — and we have not proceeded against him or the other, 
as neither were worth powder and shot.” 

It was whilst Mr. Tatham was engaged in telling his story 
that a third knock came to the door, and there entered an 
athletic gentleman in a shabby braided frock, bearing in his 
hand a letter with a large blotched red seal. 

“ Can I have the honor of speaking with Major Pendennis 
in private ? ” he began — “ I have a few words for your ear, 
sir. I am the bearer of a mission from my friend Captain 
Costigan,” — but here the man with the bass voice paused, fal- 
tered, and turned pale — he caught sight of the red and well- 
remembered face of Mr. Tatham. 

“ Hullo, Garbetts, speak up ! ” cried Mr. Foker, delighted. 

“ Why, bless my soul, it is the other party to the bill ! ” said 
Mr. Tatham. “I say, sir; stop I say.” But Garbetts, with a 
face as blank as Macbeth’s when Banquo’s ghost appears upon 
him, gasped some inarticulate words, and fled out of the room. 

The Major’s gravity was entirely upset, and he burst out 
laughing. So did Mr. Foker, who said, “ By Jove, it was a good 


PEND ENNIS. 


12 5 

un.” So did the attorney, although by profession a serious 
man. 

“ I don’t think there’ll be any fight, Major,” young Foker 
said ; and began mimicking the tragedian. “ If there is, the old 
gentleman — your name Tatham ? — very happy to make your 
acquaintance, Mr. Tatham — may send the bailiffs to separate 
the men;” and Mr. Tatham promised to do so. The Major 
was by no means sorry at the ludicrous issue of the quarrel, 
“ It seems to me, sir,” he said to Mr. Foker, “ that you always 
arrive to put me into good-humor.” 

Nor was this the only occasion on which Mr. Foker this day 
was destined to be of service to the Pendennis family. We 
have said that he had the entree of Captain Costigan’s lodgings, 
and in the course of the afternoon he thought he would pay the 
General a visit, and hear from his own lips what had occurred 
in the conversation, in the morning, with Mr. Pendennis. Cap- 
tain Costigan was not at home. He had received permission, 
nay, encouragement from his daughter, to go to the convivial 
club at the Magpie Hotel, where no doubt he was bragging at 
that moment of his desire to murder a certain ruffian ; for he 
was not only brave, but he knew it too, and liked to take out 
his courage, and, as it were, give it an airing in company. 

Costigan then was absent, but Miss Fotheringay was at 
home washing the teacups whilst Mr. Bows sat opposite to her. 

“Just done breakfast I see — how do?” said Mr. Foker, 
popping in his little funny head. 

“ Get out, you funny little man,” cried Miss Fotheringay. 

“ You mean come in,” answered the other. — “ Here we are ! ” 
and entering the room he folded his arms and began twirling 
his head round and round with immense rapidity, like Harle- 
quin in the Pantomime when he first issues from his cocoon or 
envelope. Miss Fotheringay laughed with all her heart : a wink 
of Foker’s would set her off laughing, when the bitterest joke 
Bows ever made could not get a smile from her, or the finest of 
poor Pen’s speeches would only puzzle her. At the end of the 
harlequinade he sank down on one knee and kissed her hand. 

“ You’re the drollest little man,” she said, and gave him a 
great good-humored slap. Pen used to tremble as he kissed 
her hand, Pen would have died of a slap. 

These preliminaries over, the three began to talk ; Mr. Foker 
amused his companions by recounting to them the scene which 
he had just witnessed of the discomfiture of Mr. Garbetts, by 
which they learned, for the first time, how far the General had 
carried his wrath against Major Pendennis. Foker spoke 


126 


PENDENNIS. 


strongly in favor of the Major’s character for veracity and honor, 
and described him as a tip-top swell, moving in the upper circle 
of society, who would never submit to any deceit — much more 
to deceive such a charming young woman as Miss Foth. 

He touched delicately upon the delicate marriage question, 
though he couldn’t help showing that he held Pen rather cheap. 
In fact, he had a perhaps just contempt for Mr. Pen’s high- 
flown sentimentality ; his own weakness, as he thought, not 
lying that way. “I knew it wouldn’t do, Miss Foth,” said he 
nodding his little head. “ Couldn’t do. Didn’t like to put my 
hand into the bag, but knew it couldn’t do. He’s too young 
for you : too green : a deal too green : and he turns out to be 
poor as Job. Can’t have him at no price, can she, Mr. Bo ? ” 

“ Indeed he’s a nice poor boy,” said the Fotheringay rather 
sadly. 

“ Poor little beggar,” said Bows, with his hands in his pock- 
ets, and stealing up a queer look at Miss Fotheringay. Perhaps 
he thought and wondered at the way in which women play with 
men, and coax them and win them and drop them. 

But Mr. Bows had not the least objection to acknowledge 
that he thought Miss Fotheringay was perfectly right in giving 
up Mr. Arthur Pendennis, and that in his idea the match was 
always an absurd one : and Miss Costigan owned that she 
thought so herself, only she couldn’t send away two thousand 
a year. “ It all comes of believing Papa’s silly stories,” she 
said ; “ faith, I’ll choose for meself another time ” — and very 
likely the large image of Lieutenant Sir Derby Oakes entered 
into her mind at that instant. 

After praising Major Pendennis, whom Miss Costigan 
declared to be a proper gentleman entirely, smelling of laven- 
der, and as neat as a pin, — and who was pronounced by Mr. 
Bows to be the right sort of fellow, though rather too much of 
an old buck, Mr. Foker suddenly bethought him to ask the pair 
to come and meet the Major that very evening at dinner at his 
apartment at the George. “ He agreed to dine with me, and I 
think after the — after the little shindy this morning, in which I 
must say the General was wrong, it would look kind, you know. 
— I know the Major fell in love with you, Miss Foth : he said 
so.” 

“ So she may be Mrs. Pendennis still,” Bows said with a 
sneer — “ No thank you, Mr. F. — I’ve dined.” 

“ Sure, that was at three o’clock,” said Miss Costigan, who 
had an honest appetite, “and I can’t go without you.” 

“ We’ll have lobster-salad and Champagne,” said the little 


PENDENNIS. 


127 


monster, who could not construe a line of Latin, or do a sum 
beyond the Rule of Three. Now, for lobster-salad and Cham- 
pagne in an honorable manner, Miss Costigan would have gone 
anywhere — and Major Pendennis actually found himself at seven 
o’clock, seated at a dinner-table in company with Mr. Bows, a 
professional fiddler, and Miss Costigan, whose father had wanted 
to blow his brains out a few hours before. 

To make the happy meeting complete, Mr. Foker, who 
knew Costigan’s haunts, despatched Stoopid to the club at the 
Magpie, where the General was in the act of singing a pathetic 
song, and brought him off to supper. To find his daughter and 
Bows seated at the board was a surprise indeed — Major Pen- 
dennis laughed, and cordially held out his hand, which the 
General Officer grasped avec effusicni as the French say. In 
fact he was considerably inebriated, and had already been cry- 
ing over his own song before he joined the little party at the 
George. He burst into tears more than once, during the enter- 
tainment, and called the Major his dearest friend. Stoopid and 
Mr. Foker walked home with him : the Major gallantly giving 
his arm to Miss Costigan. He was received with great friendli- 
ness when he called the next day, when many civilities passed 
between the gentlemen. On taking leave he expressed his 
anxious desire to serve Miss Costigan on any occasion in whi h 
he could be useful to her, and he shook hands with Mr. Foker 
most cordially and gratefully, and said that gentleman had done 
him the very greatest service. 

“ All right,” said Mr. Foker : and they parted with mutual 
esteem. 

On his return to Fairoaks the next day, Major Pendennis 
did not say what had happened to him on the previous night, 
or allude to the company in which he had passed it. But he 
engaged Mr. Smirke to stop to dinner ; and any person accus- 
tomed to watch his manner might have remarked that there was 
something constrained in his hilarity and talkativeness, and that 
he was unusually gracious and watchful in his communications 
with his nephew. He gave Pen an emphatic God-bless-you 
when the lad went to bed ; and as they were about to part for 
the night, he seemed as if he were going to say something to 
Mrs. Pendennis, but he bethought him that if he spoke he might 
spoil her night’s rest, and allowed her to sleep in peace. 

The next morning he was down in the breakfast-room earlier 
than was his custom, and saluted everybody there with great 
cordiality. The post used to arrive commonly about the end of 
this meal. When John, the old servant, entered, and discharged 


128 


PEND ENNIS. 


the bag of its letters and papers, the Major looked hard at Pen 
as the lad got his — Arthur blushed, and put his letter down. 
He knew the hand, it was that of old Costigan, and he did not 
care to read it in public. Major Pendennis knew the letter, too. 
He had put it into the post himself in Chatteris the day before. 

He told little Laura to go away, which the child did, having 
a thorough dislike to him ; and as the door closed on her, he 
took Mrs. Pendennis’s hand, and giving her a look full of mean- 
ing, pointed to the letter under the newspaper which Pen was 
pretending to read. “ Will you come into the drawing-room ? ” 
he said. “ I want to speak to you.” 

And she followed him, wondering, into the hall. 

“ What is it ? ” she said nervously. 

“ The affair is at an end,” Major Pendennis said. “ He has 
a letter there giving him his dismissal. I dictated it myself 
yesterday. There are a few lines from the lady, too, bidding 
him farewell. It is all over.” 

Helen ran back to the dining-room, her brother following. 
Pen had jumped at his letter the instant they were gone. He 
was reading it with a stupified face. It stated what the Major 
had said, that Mr. Costigan was most gratified for the kindness 
with which Arthur had treated his daughter, but that he was 
only now made aware of Mr. Pendennis’s pecuniary circum- 
stances. They were such that marriage was at present out of 
the question, and considering the great disparity in the age of 
the two, a future union was impossible. Under these circum- 
stances, and with the deepest regret and esteem for him, Mr. 
Costigan bade Arthur farewell, and suggested that he should 
cease visiting, for some time at least, at his house. 

A few lines from Miss Costigan were inclosed. She ac- 
quiesced in the decision of her Papa. She pointed out that 
she was many years older than Arthur, and that an engagement 
was not to be thought of. She would always be grateful for his 
kindness to her, and hoped to keep his friendship. But at 
present, and until the pain of the separation should be over, 
she entreated they should not meet. 

Pen read Costigan’s letter and its inclosure mechanically, 
hardly knowing what was before his eyes. He looked up wildly, 
and saw his mother and uncle regarding him with sad faces. 
Helen’s, indeed, was full of tender maternal anxiety. 

“ What — what is this ? ” Pen said. “ It’s some joke. This 
is not her writing. This is some servant’s writing. Who’s 
playing these tricks upon me ? ” 

“ It comes under her father’s envelope,” the Major said. 


PENDENNIS . 


129 

* Those letters you had before were not in her hand : that is 
hers.” 

“ How do you know ? ” said Pen very fiercely. 

“ I saw her write it,” the uncle answered, as the boy started 
up ; and his mother, coming forward, took his hand. He put 
her away. 

“ How came you to see her ? How came you between me 
and her ? What have I ever done to you that you should — Oh, 
it’s not true ; it’s not true ! ” — Pen broke out with a wild exe- 
cration. She can’t have done it of her own accord. “ She 
can’t mean it. She’s pledged to me. Who has told her lies 
to break her from me ? ” 

“ Lies are not told in the family, Arthur,” Major Pendennis 
replied. “ I told her the truth, which was, that you had no 
money to maintain her, for her foolish father had represented 
you to be rich. And when she knew how poor you were, she 
withdrew at once, and without any persuasion of mine. She 
was quite right. She is ten years older than you are. She is 
perfectly unfitted to be your wife, and knows it. Look at that 
handwriting, and ask yourself, is such a woman fitted to be the 
companion of your mother ? ” 

“ I will know from herself if it is true,” Arthur said, crump- 
ling up the paper. 

“ Won’t you take my word of honor ? Her letters were 
written by a confidante of hers, who writes better than she can 
— look here. Here’s one from the lady to your friend, Mr. 
Foker. You have seen her with Miss Costigan, as whose 
amanuensis she acted ” — the Major said, with ever so little of 
a sneer, and laid down a certain billet which Mr. Foker, had 
given to him. 

“ It’s not that,” said Pen, burning with shame and rage. “ I 
suppose what you say is true, sir, but I’ll hear it from herself.” 

“ Arthur ! ” appealed his mother. 

u I will see her,” said Arthur. “ I’ll ask her to marry me, 
once more. I will. No one shall prevent me.” 

“What, a woman who spells affection with one f? Non- 
sense, sir. Be a man, and remember that your mother is a 
lady. She was never made to associate with that tipsy old 
swindler or his daughter. Be a man and forget her, as she 
does you.” 

“ Be a man and comfort your mother, my Arthur,” Helen 
said, going and embracing him : and seing that the pair were 
greatly moved, Major Pendennis went out of the room and shut 
the door upon them, wisely judging that they were best alone. 

9 


I 3° 


PENDENNIS . 


He had won a complete victory. He actually had brought 
away Peri’s letters in his portmanteau from Chatteris : having 
complimented Mr. Costigan, when he returned them, by giving 
him the little promissory note which had disquieted himself 
and Mr. Garbetts : and for which the Major settled with Mr. 
Tatham. 

Pen rushed wildly off to Chatteris that day, but in vain at- 
tempted to see Miss Fotheringay, for whom he left a letter, in- 
closed to her father. The inclosure was returned by Mr. Cos- 
tigan, who begged that all correspondence might end ; and 
after one or two further attempts of the lad’s, the indignant 
General desired that their acquaintance might cease. He cut 
Pen in the street. As Arthur and Foker were pacing the 
Castle walk, one day, they came upon Emily on her father’s 
arm. She passed without any nod of recognition. Foker felt 
poor Pen trembling on his arm. 

His uncle wanted him to travel, to quit the country for a 
while, and his mother urged him too : for he was growing very 
ill, and suffered severely. But he refused, and said point-blank 
he would not go. He would not obey in this instance : and 
his mother was too fond, and his uncle too wise to force him. 
Whenever Miss Fotheringay acted, he rode over to the Chat- 
teris Theatre and saw her. One night there was so few 
people in the house that the Manager returned the money. 
Pen came home and went to bed at eight o’clock and had 
a fever. If this continues, his mother will be going over 
and fetching the girl, the Major thought, in despair. As 
for Pen, he thought he should die. We are not going to de- 
scribe his feelings,- or give a dreary journal of his despair and 
passion. Have not other gentlemen been baulked in love be- 
sides Mr. Pen ? Yes, indeed : but few die of the malady. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

IN WHICH MISS FOTHERINGAY MAKES A NEW ENGAGEMENT. 

Within a short period of the events above narrated, Mr. 
Manager Bingley was performing his famous character of 
“ Rolla,” in “ Pizarro,” to a house so exceedingly thin, that it 
would appear as if the part of Rolla was by no means such a 
favorite with the people of Chatteris as it was with the accorm 


PENDENNIS. 


* 3 * 

plished actor himself. Scarce anybody was in the theatre. 
Poor Pen had the boxes almost all to himself, and sat there 
lonely, with blood shot eyes, leaning over the ledge, and gazing 
haggardly towards the scene, when Cora came in. When she 
was not on the stage he. saw nothing. Spaniards and Peru- 
vians, processions and battles, priests and virgins of the sun, 
went in and out, and had their talk, but Arthur took no note 
of any one of them ; and only saw Cora whom his soul longed 
after. He said afterwards that he wondered he had not taken 
a pistol to shoot her, so mad was he with love, and rage, and 
despair ; and had it not been for his mother at home, to whom 
he did not speak about his luckless condition, but whose silent 
sympathy and watchfulness greatly comforted the simple half 
heart-broken fellow, who knows but he might have done some- 
thing desperate, and have ended his days prematurely in front 
of Chatteris jail ? There he sat then, miserable, and gazing 
at her. And she took no more notice of him than he did of 
the rest of the house. 

The Fotheringay was uncommonly handsome, in a white 
raiment and leopard skin, with a sun upon her breast, and fine 
tawdry bracelets on her beautiful glancing arms. She spouted 
to admiration the few words of her part, and looked it still 
better. The eyes, which had overthrown Pen’s soul, rolled and 
gleamed as lustrous as ever ; but it was not to him that they 
were directed that night. He did not know to whom, or 
remark a couple of gentlemen, in the box next to him, upon 
whom Miss Fotheringay ’s glances were perpetually shining. 

Nor had Pen noticed the extraordinary change which had 
taken place on the stage a short time after the entry of these 
two gentlemen into the theatre. There were so few people in 
the house, that the first act of the play languished entirely, and 
there had been some question of returning the money, as upon 
that other unfortunate night when poor Pen had been driven 
away. The actors were perfectly careless about their parts, 
and yawned through the dialogue, and talked loud to each other 
in the intervals. Even Bingley was listless, and Mrs. B. in 
Elvira spoke, under her breath. 

How came it that all of a sudden Mrs. Bingley began to 
raise her voice and bellow like a bull of Bashan ? Whence 
was it that Bingley, flinging off his apathy, darted about the 
stage and yelled like Kean ? Why did Garbetts and Rowkins 
and Miss Rouncy try, qach of them, the force of their charms 
or graces, and act and swagger and scowl and spout their very 
loudest at the two gentlemen in box No. 3? 


132 


PENDENNIS . 


One was a quiet little man in black, with a gray head and a 
jolly shrewd face — the other was in all respects a splendid and 
remarkable individual. He was a tall and portly gentleman 
with a hooked nose and a profusion of curling brown hair and 
whiskers ; his coat was covered with the richest frogs, braiding, 
and velvet. He had under-waistcoats, many splendid rings, 
jewelled pins and neck-chains. When he took out his yellow 
pocket-handkerchief with his hand that was cased in white 
kids, a delightful odor of musk and bergamot was shaken 
through the house. He was evidently a personage of rank, 
and it was at him that the little Chatteris company was acting. 

He was, in a word, no other than Mr. Dolphin, the great 
manager from London, accompanied by his faithful friend and 
secretary Mr. William Minns : without whom he never travelled. 
He had not been ten minutes in the theatre before his august 
presence there was perceived by Bingley and the rest: and 
they all began to act their best and try to engage his attention. 
Even Miss Fotheringay’s dull heart, which was disturbed at 
nothing, felt perhaps a flutter, when she came in presence of 
the famous London Impresario. She had not much to do in 
her part, but to look handsome, and stand in picturesque atti- 
tudes encircling her child : and she did this work to admiration. 
In vain the various actors tried to win the favor of the great 
stage Sultan. Pizarro never got a hand from him. Bingley 
yelled, and Mrs. Bingley bellowed, and the Manager only took 
snuff out of his great gold box. It was only in the last scene, 
when Rolla comes in staggering with the infant (Bingley is not 
so strong as he was, and his fourth son Master Talma Bingley 
is a monstrous large child for his age) — when Rolla comes 
staggering with the child to Cora, who rushes forward with a 
shriek and says — “ O God, there’s blood upon him ! ” — that the 
London manager clapped his hands, and broke out with an 
enthusiastic bravo. 

Then having concluded his applause, Mr. Dolphin gave 
his secretary a slap on the shoulder, and said “ By Jove, Billy, 
she’ll do ! ” 

“Who taught her that dodge?” said old Billy, who was a 
sardonic old gentleman — “ I remember her at the Olympic, and 
hang me if she could say Bo to a goose.” 

It was little Mr. Bows in the orchestra who had taught her 
the “ dodge ” in question. All the company heard the applause, 
and, as the curtain went down, came round her and congratm 
lated and hated Miss Fotheringay. * 

Now Mr. Dolphin’s appearance in the remote little Chatteris 


PENDENNIS. 


133 

theatre may be accounted for in this manner. In spite of all 
his exertions, and the perpetual blazes of triumph, coruscations 
of talent, victories of good old English comedy, which his play- 
bills advertised, his theatre (which, if you please, and to injure 
no present susceptibilities and vested interests, we shall call 
the Museum Theatre) by no means prospered, and the famous 
Impresario found himself on the verge of ruin. The great 
Hubbard had acted legitimate drama for twenty nights, and 
failed to remunerate anybody but himself : the celebrated Mr. 
and Mrs. Cawdor had come out in Mr. Rawhead’s tragedy, and 
in their favorite round of pieces, and had not attracted the 
public. Herr Garbage’s lions and tigers had drawn for a little 
time, until one of the animals had bitten a piece out of the 
Herr’s shoulder ; when the Lord Chamberlain interfered, and 
put a stop to this species of performance : and the grand 
Lyrical Drama, though brought out with unexampled splendor 
and success, with Monsieur Poumons as first tenor, and an 
enormous orchestra, had almost crushed poor Dolphin in its 
triumphant progress : so that great as his genius and resources 
were, they seemed to be at an end. He was dragging on his 
season wretchedly with half salaries, small operas, feeble old 
comedies, and his ballet company ; and everybody was looking 
out for the day when he should appear in the Gazette. 

One of the illustrious patrons of the Museum Theatre, and 
occupant of the great proscenium-box, was a gentleman whose 
name has been mentioned in a previous history ; that refined 
patron of the arts, and enlightened lover of music and the 
drama, the Most Noble the Marquis of Steyne. His lord- 
ship’s avocations as a statesman prevented him from attending 
the playhouse very often, or coming very early. But he occa- 
sionally appeared at the theatre in time for the ballet, and was 
always received with the greatest respect by the Manager, 
from whom he sometimes condescended to receive a visit in his 
box. It communicated with the stage, and when anything 00 
curred there which particularly pleased him, when a new face 
made its appearance among the coryphees, or a fair dancer 
executed a pas with especial grace or agility, Mr. Wenham, Mr. 
Wagg, or some other aide-de-camp of the noble Marquis, would 
be commissioned to go behind the scenes, and express the great 
man’s approbation, or make the inquiries which were prompted 
by his lordship’s curiosity, or his interest in the dramatic art. 
He could not be seen by the audience, for Lord Steyne sat 
modestly behind a curtain, and looked only towards the stage — - 
but you could know he was in the house, by the glances which 


134 


PENDENNIS. 


all the corps-de-ballet, and all the principal dancers, cast towards 
his box. I have seen many scores of pairs of eyes (as in the 
Palm Dance in . the ballet of Cook at Otaheite, where no less 
than a hundred-and-twenty lovely female savages in palm leaves 
and feather aprons, were made to dance round Floridar as 
Captain Cook), ogling that box as they performed before it, 
and have often wondered to remark the presence of mind of 
Mademoiselle Sauterelle, or Mademoiselle de Bondi (known as 
la petite Caoutchouc), who, when actually up in the air quiver- 
ing like so many shuttlecocks, always kept their lovely eyes 
winking at that box in which the great Steyne sat. Now and 
then you would hear a harsh voice from behind the curtain, cry, 
“ Brava, Brava,” or a pair of white gloves wave from it, and 
begin to applaud. Bondi, or Sauterelle, when they came down 
to earth curtsied and smiled, especially to those hands, before 
they walked up the stage again, panting and happy. 

One night this great Prince surrounded by a few choice 
friends was in his box at the Museum, and they were making 
such a noise and laughter that the pit was scandalized, and 
many indignant voices were bawling out silence so loudly, that 
Wagg wondered the police did not interfere to take the rascals 
out. Wenham was amusing the party in the box with extracts 
from a private letter which he had received from Major Pen- 
dennis, whose absence in the country at the full London season 
had been remarked, and of course deplored by his friends. 

“ The secret is out,” said Mr. Wenham, “ there’s a woman 
in the case.” 

“Why, d it, Wenham, he’s your age,” said the gentle- 

man behind the curtain. 

“ Pour les ames bien nees, l’amour ne compte pas le nom- 
bre des annees,” said Mr. Wenham, with a gallant air. “ For 
my part, I hope to be a victim till I die, and to break my heart 
every year of my life.” The meaning of which sentence was, 
“ My lord, you need not talk ; I’m three years younger than 
you, and twice as well conserve” 

“Wenham, you affect me,” said the great man, with one of 
his usual oaths. “ By you do. I like to see a fellow pre- 

serving all the illusions oft youth up to our time of life — and 
keeping his heart warm as yours is. Hang it, sir, — it’s a comfort 
to meet with such a generous, candid creature. — Who’s that gal 
in the second row, with blue ribbons, third from the stage — fine 
gal. Yes, you and I are sentimentalists. Wagg I don’t think 
so much cares — it’s the stomach rather more than the heart 
with you, eh, Wagg, my boy ? ” 


PENDENNIS. 


*35 

“I like everything that’s good,” said Mr. Wagg, generously. 
K Beauty and Burgundy, Venus and Venison. I don’t say that 
Venus’s turtles are to be despised, because they don’t cook 
them at the London Tavern : but — but tell us about old Pen- 
dennis, Mr. Wenham,” he abruptly concluded — for his joke 
flagged just then, as he saw that his patron was not listening. 
In fact, Steyne’s glasses were up, and he was examining some 
object on the stage. 

“ Yes, I’ve heard that joke about Venus’s turtle and the 
London Tavern before — you begin to fail, my poor Wagg. I r 
you don’t mind I shall be obliged to have anew Jester,” Lord 
Steyne said, laying down his glass. “ Go on, Wenham, about 
old Pendennis.” 

“ Dear Wenham, — he begins,” Mr. Wenham read, — “ as you 
have had my character in your hands for the last three weeks, 
and no doubt have torn me to shreds, according to your custom, 
I think you can afford to be good-humored by way of variety, 
and to do me a service. It is a delicate matter, entre nous , une 
affaire de coeur. There is a young friend of mine who is gone 
wild about a certain Miss Fotheringay, an actress at the theatre 
here, and I must own to you, as handsome a woman, and, as it 
appears to me, as good an actress as ever put on rouge. She 
does Ophelia, Lady Teazle, Mrs. Haller — that sort of thing. 
Upon my word, she is as splendid as Georges in her best days, 
and, as far as I know, utterly superior to anything we have on 
our scene. I want a London engagement for her. Can’t you 
get your friend Dolphin to come and see her — to engage her — 
to take her out of this place ? A word from a noble friend of 
ours (you understand) would be invaluable, and if you could 
get the Gaunt House interest for me — I will promise anything 
I can in return for your service — which I shall consider one of 
the greatest that can be done to me. Do, do this now as a good 
fellow, which I always said you weri : and in return, command 
yours truly, 

“A. Pendennis.” 

“ It’s a clear case,” said Mr. Wenham, having read this 
letter ; “ old Pendennis is in love.” 

“ And wants to get the woman up to London — evidently,” 
continued Mr. Wagg. 

“ I should like to see Pendennis on his knees, with the 
rheumatism,” said Mr. Wenham. 

“ Or accommodating the beloved object with a lock of his 
hair,” said Wagg. 


PENDENNIS . 


136 

“ Stuff,” said the great man. “ He has relations in the 
country, hasn’t he ? He said something about a nephew, whose 
interest could return a member. It is the nephew’s affair, 
depend on it. The young one is in a scrape. I was myself — • 
when I was in the fifth form at Eton — a market-gardener’s 
daughter — and swore I’d marry her. I was mad about her — 
poor Polly ! ” — Here he made a pause, and perhaps the past 
rose up to Lord Steyne, and George Gaunt was a boy again 
not altogether lost. — “ But I say, she must be a fine woman 
from Pendennis’s account. Have in Dolphin, and let us hear 
if he knows anything of her.” 

At this Wenham sprang out of the box, passed the servitor 
who waited at the door communicating with the stage, and who 
saluted Mr. Wenham with profound respect ; and the latter 
emissary, pushing on and familiar with the place, had no dif- 
ficulty in finding out the manager, who was employed, as he 
not unfrequently was, in swearing and cursing the ladies of the 
corps-de-ballet for not doing their duty. 

The oaths died away on Mr. Dolphin’s lips, as soon as he 
saw Mr. Wenham ; and he drew off the hand which was 
clenched in the face of one of the offending Coryphdes, to 
grasp that of the new-comer. “ How do, Mr. Wenham ? How’s 
his lordship to-night ? Looks uncommonly well,” said the 
manager smiling, as if he had never been out of temper in his 
life ; and he was only too delighted to follow Lord Steyne’s 
ambassador, and pay his personal respects to that great man. 

The visit to Chatteris was the result of their conversation : 
and Mr. Dolphin wrote to his Lordship from that place, and 
did himself the honor to inform the Marquis of Steyne, that he 
had seen the lady about whom his Lordship had spoken, that 
he was as much struck by her talents as he was by her personal 
appearance, and that he had made an engagement with Miss 
Fotheringay, who would soon have the honor of appearing be- 
fore a London audience, and his noble and enlightened patron 
th^ Marquis of Steyne. 

Pen read the announcement of Miss Fotheringay’s engage- 
ment in the Chatteris paper, where he had so often praised her 
charms. The Editor made very handsome mention of her 
talent and beauty, and prophesied her success in the metropolis. 
Bingley, the manager, began to advertise “The last night of 
Miss Fotheringay’s engagement.” Poor Pen and Sir Derby 
Oaks were very constant at the play : Sir Derby in the stage- 
box, throwing bouquets and getting glances. — Pen in the almost 
deserted boxes, haggard, wretched, and lonely. Nobody cared 


PENDENNIS. 


whether Miss Fotheringay was going or staying except those 
two — and perhaps one more, which was Mr. Bows of the 
orchestra. 

He came out of his place one night, and went into the house 
to the box where Pen was ; and he held out his hand to him, 
and asked him to come and walk. They walked down the 
street together ; and went and sat upon Chatteris bridge in 
the moonlight, and talked about Her. “ We may sit on the 
same bridge,” said he : “ we have been in the same boat for a 
long time. You are not the only man who has made a fool of 
himself about that woman. And I have less excuse than you, 
because I’m older and know her better. She has no more 
heart than the stone you are leaning on ; and it or you or I 
might fall into the water, and never come ,up again, and she 
wouldn’t care. Yes — she would care for me, because she wants 
me to teach her : and she won’t be able to get on without me, 
and will be forced to send for me from London. But she wouldn’t 
if she didn’t want me. She has no heart and no head, and no 
sense, and no feeling, and no griefs or cares, whatever. I was 
going to say no pleasures — but the fact is, she d<5fes like her 
dinner, and she is pleased when people admire her.” 

“ And you do ? ” said Pen, interested out of himself, and 
wondering at the crabbed homely little old man. 

“ It’s a habit, like taking snuff, or drinking drams,” said 
the other, “ I’ve been taking her these five years, and can’t do 
without her. It was I made her. If she doesn’t send for me, 
I shall follow her : but I know she’ll send for me. She wants 
me. Some days she’ll marry, and fling me over, as I do the 
end of this cigar.” 

The little flaming spark dropped into the water below, and 
disappeared ; and Pen, as he rode home that night, actually 
thought about somebody but himself. 


CHAPTER XV. 

THE HAPPY VILLAGE. 

Until the enemy had retired altogether from before the 
place, Major Pendennis was resolved to keep his garrison in 
Fairoaks. Pie did not appear to watch Pen’s behavior, or to 
put any restraint on his nephew’s actions, but he managed, 


PENDENN1S . 


138 

nevertheless, to keep the lad constantly under his eye or those* 
of his agents, and young Arthur’s comings and goings were 
quite well known to his vigilant guardian. 

I suppose there is scarcely any man who reads this or any 
other novel but has been baulked in love sometime or the other, 
by fate, and circumstance, by falsehood of women, or his own 
fault. Let that worthy friend recall his own sensations under 
the circumstances, and apply them as illustrative of Mr. Pen’s 
anguish. Ah ! what weary nights and sickening fevers ! Ah t 
what mad desires dashing up against some rock of obstruction: 
or indifference, and flung back again from the unimpressionable 
granite ! If a list could be made this very night in London of 
the groans, thoughts, imprecations of tossing lovers, what a 
catalogue it would be ! I wonder what a percentage of the 
male population of the metropolis will be lying awake at two 
or three o’clock to-morrow morning, counting the hours as they 
go by, knelling drearily, and rolling from left to right, restless, 
yearning, and heart-sick ? What a pang it is ! I never knew a 
man die of love, certainly, but I have known a twelve stone- 
man go dowff to nine stone five under a disappointed passion, 
so that pretty nearly a quarter of him may be said to have 
perished : and that is no small portion. He has come back to 
his old size subsequently — perhaps is bigger than ever : very 
likely some new affection has closed round his heart and ribs: 
and made them comfortable, and young Pen is a man who will: 
console himself like the rest of us. We say this lest the ladies; 
should be disposed to deplore him prematurely, or be seriously 
uneasy with regard to his complaint. His mother was, but 
what will not a maternal fondness fear or invent ? “ Depend 

on it, my dear creature,” Major Pendennis would say gallantly 
to her, “ the boy will recover. As soon as we get her out of 
the country, we will fake him somewhere, and show him a little 
life. Meantime make yourself easy about him. Half a fel- 
low’s pangs at losing a woman result from vanity more than 
affection. To be left by a woman is the deuce and all, to be 
sure ; but look how easily we leave ’em.” 

Mrs. Pendennis did not know. This sort of knowledge had 
by no means come within the simple lady’s scope. Indeed, 
she did not like the subject or to talk of it : her heart had had 
its own little private misadventure, and she had borne up against 
it, and cured it : and perhaps she had not much patience with 
other folks’ passions, except, of course, Arthur’s, whose suffer- 
ings she made her own, feeling indeed very likely, in many of 
the boy’s illnesses and pains, a great deal more than Pen him* 


PENDENNIS . 


139 


self endured. And she watched him through this present grief 
with a jealous silent sympathy ; although, as we have said, he 
did not talk to her of his unfortunate condition. 

The Major must be allowed to have had not a little merit 
and forbearance, and to have exhibited a highly creditable 
degree of family affection. The life at Fairoaks was uncom- 
monly dull to a man who had the entree of half the houses in 
London, and was in the habit of making his bow in three or 
four drawing-rooms of a night. A dinner with Doctor Portman 
or a neighboring Squire now and then ; a dreary rubber at 
backgammon with the widow, who did her utmost to amuse 
him ; these were the chief of his pleasures. He used to long 
for the arrival of the bag with the letters, and he read every 
word of the evening paper. He doctored himself too, assidu- 
ously, — a course of quiet living would suit him well, he thought, 
after the London banquets. He dressed himself laboriously 
every morning and afternoon : he took regular exercise up and 
down the terrace walk. Thus, with his cane, his toilet, his 
medicine-chest, his backgammon-box, and his newspaper, this 
worthy and worldly philosopher fenced himself against ennui ; 
and if he did not improve each shining hour, like the bees by 
the widow’s garden wall, Major Pendennis made one hour after 
another pass as he could ; and rendered his captivity just 
tolerable. 

Pen sometimes took the box at backgammon of a night, or 
would listen to his mother’s simple music of summer evenings 
— but he was very restless and wretched in spite of all : and 
has been known to be up before the early daylight even : and 
down at a carp pond in Clavering Park, a dreary pool with in- 
numerable whispering rushes and green alders, where a milk- 
maid drowned herself in the Baronet’s grandfather’s time, and 
her ghost was said to walk still. But Pen did not drown him- 
self, as perhaps his mother fancied might be his intention. He 
liked to go and fish there, and think and think at leisure, as the 
float quivered in the little eddies of the pond, and the fish 
flapped about him. If he got a bite he was excited enough : 
and in this way occasionally brought home carps, tenches, and 
eels, which the Major cooked in the Continental fashion. 

By this pond, and under a tree, which was his favorite 
resort, Pen composed a number of poems suitable to his cir- 
cumstances — over which verses he blushed in after days, won- 
dering how he could ever have invented such rubbish. And as 
for the tree, why it is in a hollow of this very tree, where he 
used to put his tin box of ground-bait, and other fishing com- 


140 


PENDENNIS. 


modifies, that he afterwards — but we are advancing matters. 
Suffice it to say, he wrote poems and relieved himself very 
much. When a man’s grief or passion is at this point, it may 
be loud, but it is not very severe. When a gentleman is cud- 
gelling his brain to find any rhyme for sorrow, besides borrow 
and to-morrow, his woes are nearer at an end than he thinks 
for. So were Pen’s. He had his hot and cold fits, his days of 
sullenness and peevishness, and of blank resignation and des- 
pondency, and occasional mad paroxysms of rage and longing, 
in which fits Rebecca would be saddled and galloped fiercely 
about the country, or into Chatteris, her rider gesticulating 
wildly on her back, and astonishing carters and turnpikemen 
as he passed, crying out the name of the false one. 

Mr. Foker became a very frequent and welcome visitor at 
Fairoaks during this period, where his good spirits and oddities 
always amused the Major and Pendennis, while they astonished 
the widow and little Laura not a little. His tandem made a 
great sensation in Clavering market-place ; where he upset a 
market stall, and cut Mrs. Pybus’s poodle over the shaven 
quarters, and drank a glass of raspberry bitters at the Claver- 
ing Arms. All the society in the little place heard who he was, 
and looked out his name in their Peerages. He was so young, 
and their books so old, that his name did not appear in many 
of their volumes ; and his mamma, now quite an antiquated 
lady, figured amongst the progeny of the Earl of Rosherville, 
as Lady Agnes Milton still. But his name, wealth, and honor- 
able lineage were speedily known about Clavering, where you 
may be sure that poor Pen’s little transaction with the Chatteris 
actress was also pretty freely discussed. 

Looking at the little old town of Clavering St. Mary from 
the London road as it runs by the lodge at Fairoaks, and seeing 
the rapid and shining Brawl winding down from the town and 
skirting the woods of Clavering Park, and the ancient church 
tower and peaked roofs of the houses rising up amongst trees 
and old walls, behind which swells a fair back ground of sun- 
shiny hills that stretch from Clavering westward towards the 
sea — the place appears to be so cheery and comfortable that 
many a traveller’s heart must have yearned towards it from 
the coach-top, and he must have thought that it was in such a 
calm friendly nook he would like to shelter at the end of life’s 
struggle. Tom Smith, who used to drive the Alacrity coach, 
would often point to a tree near the river, from which a fine 
view of the church and town was commanded, and inform his 


PEND ENNIS. 


141 


companion on the box that “ Artises come and take hoff the 
church from that there tree. — It was a Habby once sir : ” — and 
indeed a pretty view it is, which I recommend to Mr. Stanfield 
or Mr. Roberts, for their next tour. 

Like Constantinople seen from the Bosphorus ; like Mrs. 
Rougemont viewed in her box from the opposite side of the 
house ; like many an object which we pursue in life, and ad- 
mire before we have attained it ; Clavering is rather prettier at 
a distance than it is on a closer acquaintance. The town so 
cheerful of aspect a few furlongs off, looks very blank and 
dreary. Except on market days there is nobody in the streets. 
The clack of a pair of pattens echoes through half the place, 
and you may hear the creaking of the rusty old ensign at the 
Clavering Arms, without being disturbed by any other noise. 
There has not been a ball in the Assembly Rooms since the 
Clavering volunteers gave one to their Colonel, the old Sir 
Francis Clavering ; and the stables which once held a great 
part of that brilliant, but defunct regiment, are now cheerless 
and empty, except on Thursdays, when the farmers put up 
there, and their tilted carts and gigs make a feeble show of 
liveliness in the place, or on Petty Sessions, when the magis- 
trates attend in what used to be the old card-room. 

On the south side of the market rises up the church, with 
its great gray towers, of which the sun illuminates the delicate 
carving ; deepening the shadows of the huge buttresses, and 
gilding the glittering windows, and flaming vanes. The image 
of the Patroness of the Church was wrenched out of the porch 
centuries ago : such of the statues of saints as were within 
reach of stones and hammer at that period of pious demolition, 
are maimed and headless, and of those who were out of fire, 
only Doctor Portman knows the names and history, for his 
curate, Smirke, is not much of an antiquarian, and Mr. Simcoe 
(husband of the Honorable Mrs. Simcoe), incumbent and archi- 
tect of the Chapel of Ease in the lower town, think them the 
abomination of desolation. 

The Rectory is a stout, broad-shouldered brick house, of 
the reign of Anne. It communicates with the church and 
market by different gates, and stands at the opening of Yew- 

tree Lane, where the Grammar School (Rev. Wapshot) is ; 

Yew-tree Cottage (Miss Flather) ; the butcher’s slaughtering- 
house, an old barn or brew-house of the Abbey times, and the 
Misses Finucane’s establishment for young ladies. The two 
schools had their pews in the loft on each side of the organ, 
until the Abbey Church getting rather empty, through the falling 


PENDENNIS. 


142 

off of the congregation, who were inveigled to the Heresy-shop 
in the lower town, the Doctor induced the Misses Finucane to 
bring their pretty little flock down stairs ; and the young 
ladies’ bonnets make a tolerable show in the rather vacant 
aisles. Nobody is in the great pew of the Clavering family, 
except the statues of defunct baronets and their ladies : there 
is Sir Poyntz Clavering, Knight and Baronet, kneeling in a 
square beard opposite his wife in a ruff : a very fat lady, the 
Dame Rebecca Clavering, in alto-relievo, is borne up to Heaven 
by two little blue-veined angels, who seemed to have a severe 
task— and so forth. How well in after-life Pen remembered 
those effigies, and how often in youth he scanned them as the 
Doctor was grumbling the sermon from the pulpit, and Smirke’s 
mild head and forehead curl peered over the great prayer-book 
in the desk ! 

The Fairoaks folks were constant at the old church ; their 
servants had a pew, so had the Doctor’s, so had Wapshot’s, 
and those of the Misses Finucane’s establishment, three maids 
and a very nice-looking young man in a livery. The Wapshot 
family were numerous and faithful. Glanders and his children 
regularly came to church : so did one of the apothecaries. 
Mrs. Pypus went, turn and turn about, to the Low Town church, 
and to the Abbey : the Charity School and their families of 
course came ; Wapshot’s boys made a good cheerful noise, 
scuffling with their feet as they marched into church and up the 
organ-loft stairs, and blowing their noses a good deal during 
the service. To be brief, the congregation looked as decent as 
might be in these bad times. The Abbey Church was furnished 
with a magnificent screen, and many hatchments and heraldic 
tombstones. The Doctor spent a great part of his income in 
beautifying his darling place ; he had endowed it with a superb 
painted window, bought in the Netherlands, and an organ 
grand enough for a cathedral. 

But in spite of organ and window, in consequence of the 
latter very likely, which had come out of a Papistical, place of 
worship and was blazoned all over with idolatry, Clavering 
New Church prospered scandalously in the teeth of Orthodoxy ; 
and many of the Doctor’s congregation deserted to Mr, Simcoe 
and the honorable woman his wife. Their efforts had thinned 
the very Ebenezer hard by them, which building before Sim- 
coe’s advent used to be so full, that you could see the backs of 
the congregation squeezing out of the arched windows thereof. 
Mr. Simcoe’s tracts fluttered into the doors of all the Doctor’s 
cottages, and were taken as greedily as honest Mrs. Portman’s 


PENDENNIS. 


143 

soup, with the quality of which the graceless people found fault. 
With the folks at the Ribbon Factory situated by the weir on 
the Brawl side, and round which the Low Town had grown, 
Orthodoxy could make no way at all. Quiet Miss Mira was put 
out of court by impetuous Mrs. Simcoe and her female aides- 
de-camp. Ah, it was a hard burden for the Doctor’s lady to 
bear, to behold her husband’s congregation dwindling away ; 
to give the precedence on the few occasions when they met to 
a notorious low-churchman’s wife who was the daughter of an 
Irish Peer ; to know that there was a party in Clavering, their 
own town of Clavering, on which her Doctor spent a great deal 
more than his professional income, who held him up to odium 
because he played a rubber at whist ; and pronounced him to 
be a Heathen because he went to the play. In her grief she 
besought him to give up the play and the rubber, — indeed they 
could scarcely get a table now, so dreadful was the outcry 
against the sport, — but the Doctor declared that he would do 
what he thought right, and what the great and good. George 
the Third did (whose Chaplain he had been) : and as for giv- 
ing up whist because those silly folks cried out against it, he 
would play dummy to the end of his days with his wife and 
Mira, rather than yield to their despicable persecutions. 

Of the two families, owners of the Factory (which had 
spoiled the Brawl as a trout-stream and brought all the mis- 
chief into the town), the senior partner, Mr. Rolt, went to 
Ebenezer ; the junior, Mr. Barker, to the New Church. In a 
word, people quarrelled in this little place a great deal more 
than neighbors do in London : and in the Book Club, which the 
prudent and conciliating Pendennis had set up, and which 
ought to have been a neutral territory, they bickered so much 
that nobody scarcely was ever seen in the reading-room, except 
Smirke, who, though he kept up a faint amity with the Simcoe 
faction, had still a taste for magazines and light worldly litera- 
ture ; and old Glanders, whose white head and grizzly mus- 
tache might be seen at the window ; and of course, little Mrs. 
Pybus, who looked at everybody’s letters as the Post brought 
them (for the Clavering Reading Room, as every one knows, 
used to be held at Backer’s Library, London Street, formerly 
Hog Lane), and read every advertisement in the paper. 

It may be imagined how great a sensation was created in 
this amiable little community when the news reached it <$f Mr. 
Pen’s love-passages at Chatteris. It was carried from house to 
house, and formed the subject of talk at high-church, low-church, 
and no-church tables ; it was canvassed by the Misses Finucane 


*44 


PENDENNIS. 


and their teachers, and very likely debated by the young ladies 
in the dormitories, for what we know ; Wapshot’s big boys had 
their version of the story and eyed Pen curiously as he sat in his 
pew at church, or raised the linger of scorn at him as he passed 
through Chatteris. They always hated him and called him 
Lord Pendennis, because he did not wear corduroys as they did, 
and rode a horse, and gave himself the airs of a buck. 

And, if the truth must be told, it was Mrs. Portman herself 
who was the chief narrator of the story of Pen’s loves. What- 
ever tales this candid woman heard, she was sure to impart 
them to her neighbors ; and after she had been put into pos- 
session of Pen’s secret by the little scandal at Chatteris, poor 
Doctor Portman knew that it would next day be about the 
parish of which he was the Rector. And so indeed it was ; the 
whole society there had the legend — at the news-room, at the 
milliner’s, at the shoe-shop, and the general warehouse at the 
corner of the market ; at Mrs. Pybus’s, at the Glanders’s, at the 
Plonorable Mrs. Simcoe’s soiree, at the Factory ; nay, through 
the mill itself the tale was current in a few hours, and young 
Arthur Pendennis’s madness was in every mouth. 

All Doctor Portman’s acquaintances barked out upon him 
when he walked the street the next day. The poor divine 
knew that his Betsy was the author of the rumor, and groaned 
in spirit. Well, well, — it must have come in a day or two, and 
it was as well that the town should have the real story. What 
the Clavering folks thought of Mrs. Pendennis for spoiling her 
son, and of that precocious young rascal of an Arthur, for dar- 
ing to propose to a play-actress, need not be told here. If pride 
exists amongst any folks in our country, and assuredly we have 
enough of it, there is no pride more deep-seated than that of 
twopenny old gentlewomen in small towns. “ Gracious good- 
ness,” the cry was, “ how infatuated the mother is about that 
pert and headstrong boy who gives himself the airs of a lord 
on his blood-horse , and for whom our society is not good enough, 
and who would marry an odious painted actress of a booth, 
where very likely he wants to rant himself. If dear good Mr. 
Pendennis had been alive this scandal would never have hap- 
pened.” 

No more it would, very likely, nor should we have been oc- 
cupied in narrating Pen’s history. It was true that he gave 
himself airs to the Clavering folks. Naturally haughty and 
frank, their cackle and small talk and small dignities bored him, 
and he showed a contempt which he could not conceal. The 
Doctor and the Curate were the only people Pen cared for in 


PENDENNIS. 


r 4S 

the place — even Mrs. Portman shared in the general distrust of 
him, and of his mother, the widow, who kept herself aloof from 
the village society, and was sneered at accordingly, because she 
tried, forsooth, to keep her head up with the great County 
families. She, indeed! Mrs. Barker at the Factory has four 
times the butcher’s meat that goes up to Fairoaks, with all 
their fine airs. 

& c., &c., &c. : let the reader fill up these details according 
to his liking and experience of village scandal. They will 
suffice to show how it was that a good woman, occupied solely 
in doing her duty to her neighbor and her children, and an 
honest, brave lad, impetuous, and full of good, and wishing well 
to every mortal alive, found enemies and detractors amongst 
people to whom they were superior, and to whom they had 
never done anything like harm. The Clavering curs were 
yelping all round the house of Fairoaks, and delighted to pull 
Pen down. 

Doctor Portman and Smirke were both cautious of informing 
the widow of the constant outbreak of calumny which was 
pursuing poor Pen, though Glanders, who was a friend of the 
house, kept him cm courant . It may be imagined what his 
indignation was : was there any man in the village whom he 
could call to account ? Presently some wags began to chalk up 
“ Fotheringay for ever ! ” and other sarcastic allusions to late 
transactions at Fairoaks’ gate. Another brought a large play- 
bill from Chatteris, and wafered it there one night. On one 
occasion Pen, riding through the Low Town, fancied he heard 
the Factory boys jeer him ; and finally, going through the 
Doctor’s gate into the churchyard, where some of Wapshot’s 
boys were lounging, the biggest of them, a young gentleman 
about twenty years of age, son of a neighboring small Squire, 
who lived in the doubtful capacity of parlor boarder with Mr. 
Wapshot, flung himself into a theatrical attitude near a newly- 
made grave, and began repeating Hamlet’s verses over Ophelia, 
with a hideous leer at Pen. 

The young fellow was so enraged that he rushed at Hobnell 
Major with a shriek very much resembling an oath, cut him 
furiously across the face with the riding-whip which he carried, 
flung it away, calling upon the cowardly villain to defend 
himself, and in another minute knocked the bewildered . young 
ruffian into the grave which was just waiting for a different 
lodger. 

Then, with his fists clenched, and his face quivering with 
passion and indignation, he roared out to Mr. Hobnell’s gaping 

io 


PEND ENNIS. 


146 

companions, to know if any of the blackguards would come on ? 
But they held back with a growl, and retreated, as Doctor Port- 
man came up to his wicket, and Mr. Hobnell, with his nose and 
lip bleeding piteously, emerged from the grave. 

Pen looking death and defiance at the lads, who retreated 
towards their side of the churchyard, walked back again 
through the Doctor’s wicket, and was interrogated by that 
gentleman. The young fellow was so agitated he could scarcely 
speak. His voice broke into a sob as he answered : “ The 
— coward insulted me, sir,” he said and ; the Doctor passed over 
the oath, and respected the emotion of the honest suffering 
young heart. 

Pendennis the elder, who, like a real man of the world, had 
a proper and constant dread of the opinion of his neighbor, 
was prodigiously annoyed by the absurd little tempest which 
was blowing in Chatteris, and tossing about Master Pen’s 
reputation. Doctor Portman and Captain Glanders had to 
support the charges of the whole Chatteris society against the 
young reprobate, who was looked upon as a monster of crime. 
Pen did not say anything about the churchyard scuffle at home ; 
but went over to Baymouth, and took counsel with his friend 
Harry Foker, Esq., who drove over his drag presently to the 
Clavering Arms, whence he sent Stoopid with a note to Thomas 
Hobnell, Esq., at the Rev. J. Wapshot’s, and a civil message to 
ask when he should wait upon that gentleman. 

Stoopid brought back word that the note had been opened 
by Mr. Hobnell, and read to half-a-dozen of the big boys, on 
whom it seemed to make a great impression ; and that after 
consulting together and laughing, Mr. Hobnell said he would 
send an answer “ arter arternoon school, which the bell was a 
ringing : and Mr. Wapshot, he came out in his Master’s gownd.” 
Stoopid was learned in academical costume, having attended 
Mr. Foker at St. Boniface. 

Mr. Foker went out to see the curiosities of Clavering 
meanwhile ; but not having a taste for architecture, Doctor 
Portman’s fine church did not engage his attention much, and 
he pronounced the tower to be as mouldy as an old Stilton 
cheese. He walked down the street and looked at the few 
shops there ; he saw Captain Glanders at the window of the 
Reading-room, and having taken a good stare at that gentleman, 
he wagged his head at him in token of satisfaction ; he inquired 
the price of meat at the butcher’s with an air of the greatest 
interest, and asked “ when was next killing day ? ” he flattened 




DOES ANYBODY WANT MORE? 

























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PENDENNIS. 


*47 


his little nose against Madam Fribsby’s window to see if haply 
there was a pretty workwoman in her premises ; but there was 
no face more comely than the doll’s or dummy’s wearing 
the French cap in the window, only that of Madam Fribsby 
herself, dimly visible in the parlor, reading a novel. That 
object was not of sufficient interest to keep Mr. Foker very 
long in contemplation, and so having exhausted the town and 
the inn stables, in which there were no cattle, save the single 
old pair of posters that earned a scanty livelihood by transport- 
ing the gentry round about to the county dinners, Mr. Foker 
was giving himself up to ennui entirely, when a messenger from 
Mr. Hobnell was at length announced. 

It was no other than Mr. Wapshot himself, who tame with 
an air of great indignation, and holding Pen’s missive in his 
hand, asked Mr. Foker “ how dared he bring such an unchris- 
tian message as a challenge to a boy of his school ?” 

In fact Pen had written a note to his adversary of the day 
before, telling him that if after the chastisement which his in- 
solence richly deserved, he felt inclined to ask the reparation 
which was usually given amongst gentlemen, Mr. Arthur Pen- 
dennis’s friend, Mr. Henry Foker, was empowered to make any 
arrangements for the satisfaction of Mr. Hobnell. 

“ And so he sent you with the answer — did he, sir ? ” Mr. 
Foker said, surveying the Schoolmaster in his black coat and 
clerical costume. 

“ If he had accepted this wicked challenge, I should have 
flogged him,” Mr. Wapshot said, and gave Mr. Foker a glance 
which seemed to say, “ and I should like very much to flog you 
too.” 

“ Uncommon kind of you, sir, I’m sure,” said Pen’s 
emissary. “ I told my principal that I didn’t think the other 
man would fight,” he continued with a great air of dignity. 
“ He prefers being flogged to fighting, sir, I dare say. May I 
offer you any refreshment, Mr. — ? I haven’t the advantage 
of your name.” 

“ My name is Wapshot, sir, and I am Master of the Gram- 
mar School of this town, sir,” cried the other : “ and I want no 
refreshment, sir, I thank you, and have no desire to make your 
acquaintance, sir.” 

“ I didn’t seek yours, sir, I’m sure,” replied Mr. Foker. 
“ In affairs of this sort, you see, I think it is a pity that the 
clergy should be called in, but there’s no accounting for tastes, 
sir.” 

“ I think it’s a pity that boys should talk about committing 


PENDENNIS. 


148 

murder, sir, as lightly as you do,” roared the Schoolmaster ; 
** and if I had you in my school — ” 

“ I dare say you would teach me better, sir,” Mr. Foker 
said, with a bow. “ Thank you, sir. I’ve finished my educa- 
tion, sir, and ain’t a-going back to school, sir — when I do, I’ll 
remember your kind offer, sir. John, show this gentleman 
down stairs — and, of course, as Mr. Hobnell likes being 
thrashed, we can have no objection, sir, and we shall be very 
happy to accommodate him, whenever he comes our way.” 

And with this, the young fellow bowed the elder gentleman 
out of the room, and sat down and wrote a note off to Pen, in 
which he informed the latter, that Mr. Hobnell was not dis- 
posed to fight, and proposed to put up with the caning which 
Pen had administered to him. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

WHICH CONCLUDES THE FIRST PART OF THIS HISTORY. 

Pen’s conduct in this business of course was soon made 
public, and angered his friend Doctor Portman not a little ; 
while it only amused Major Pendennis. As for the good Mrs. 
Pendennis, she was almost distracted when she heard of the 
squabble, and of Pen’s unchristian behavior. All sorts of 
wretchedness, discomfort, crime, annoyance, seemed to come 
out of this transaction in which the luckless boy had engaged : 
and she longed more than ever to see him out of Chatteris 
for a while, — anywhere removed from the woman who had 
brought him into so much trouble. 

Pen when remonstrated with by this fond parent, and angrily 
rebuked by the Doctor for his violence and ferocious intentions, 
took the matter au grand serieux, with the happy conceit and 
gravity of youth : said that he would permit no man to insult 
him upon this head without vindicating his own honor, and ap* 
pealing, asked whether he could have acted otherwise as a 
gentleman, than as he did in resenting the outrage offered to 
him, and in offering satisfaction to the person chastised ? 

“ Vous allez trop vite , my good sir,” said the uncle, rather 
puzzled, for he had been indoctrinating his nephew with some 
of his own notions upon the point of honor — old-world notions 


PENDEttNIS. 


149 


savoring of the camp and pistol a great deal more than our 
soberer opinions of the present day — “ between men of the 
world I 'don’t say ; but between two schoolboys, this sort of 
thing is ridiculous, my dear boy — perfectly ridiculous.” 

“ It is extremely wicked, and unlike my son,” said Mrs. 
Pendennis, with tears in her eyes ; and bewildered with the 
obstinacy of the boy. 

Pen kissed her, and said with great pomposity, “ Women, 
dear mother, don’t understand these matters — I put myself into 
Foker’s hands — I had no other course to pursue.” 

Major Pendennis grinned and shrugged his shoulders. The 
young ones were certainly making great progress, he thought. 
Mrs. Pendennis declared that that Foker was a wicked horrid 
little wretch, and was sure that he would lead her dear boy into 
mischief, if Pen went to the same college with him. “ I have a 
great mind not to let him go at all,” she said : and only that 
she remembered that the lad’s father had always destined him 
for the College in which he had had his own brief education, 
very likely the fond mother would have put a veto upon his 
going to the University. 

That he was to go, and at the next October term, had been 
arranged between all the authorities who presided over the lad’s 
welfare. Foker had promised to introduce him to the right set ; 
and Major Pendennis laid great store upon Pen’s introduction 
into College life and society by this admirable young gentle- 
man. “ Mr. Foker knows the very best young men now at the 
University,” the Major said, “ and Pen will form acquaintances 
there who will be of the greatest advantage through life to him. 
The young Marquis of Plinlimmon is there, eldest son of the 
Duke of St. David’s — Lord Magnus Charters is there, Lord 
Runnymede’s son ; and a first cousin of Mr. Foker, (Lady 
Runnymede, my dear, was Lady Agatha Milton, you of course 
remember,) Lady Agnes will certainly invite him to Logwood ; 
and far from being alarmed at his intimacy with her son, who 
is a singular' and humorous, but most prudent and amiable 
young man, to whom, I am sure, we are under every obligation 
for his admirable conduct in the affair of the Fotheringay mar- 
riage, I look upon it as one of the very luckiest things which 
could have happened to Pen, that he should have formed an 
intimacy with this most amusing young gentleman.” 

Helen sighed, she supposed the Major knew best. Mr. 
Foker had been very kind in the wretched business with Miss 
Costigan, certainly, and she was grateful to him. But she 
could not feel otherwise than a dim presentiment of evil ; and 


PEJVD ENNIS. 


* 5 ° 

all these quarrels, and riots, and worldliness, scared her about 
the fate of her boy. 

Doctor Portman was decidedly of opinion that Pen should 
go to College. He hoped the lad would read, and have a 
moderate indulgence of the best society too. He was of opin- 
ion that Pen would distinguish himself : Smirke spoke very 
highly of his proficiency : the Doctor himself had heard him 
construe, and thought he acquitted himself remarkably well. 
That he should go out of Chatteris was a great point at any 
rate ; and Pen, who was distracted from his private grief by 
the various rows and troubles which had risen round about him, 
gloomily said he would obey. 

There were assizes, races, and the entertainments and the 
flux of company consequent upon them, at Chatteris, during a 
part of the months of August and September, and Miss 
Fotheringay still continued to act, and take farewell of the 
audiences at the Chatteris Theatre during that time. Nobody 
seemed to be particularly affected by her presence, or her an- 
nounced departure, except those persons whom we have named ; 
nor could the polite county folks, who had houses in London, 
and very likely admired the Fotheringay prodigiously in the 
capital, when they had been taught to do so by the Fashion 
which set in her favor, find anything remarkable in the actress 
performing on the little Chatteris boards. Many a genius and 
many a quack, for that matter, has met with a similar fate 
before and since Miss Costigan’s time. This honest woman 
meanwhile bore up against the public neglect, and any other 
crosses or vexations which she might have in life, with her 
usual equanimity ; and ate, drank, acted, slept, with that regu- 
larity and comfort which belongs to people of her temperament. 
What a deal of grief, care, and other harmful excitement, does 
a healthy dulness and cheerful insensibility avoid ! Nor do I 
mean to say that Virtue is not Virtue because it is never 
tempted to go astray ; only that dulness is a much finer gift 
than we give it credit for being, and that some people are very 
lucky whom Nature has endowed with a good store of that great 
anodyne. 

Pen used to go drearily in and out from the play at Chat- 
teris during this season, and pretty much according to his fancy. 
His proceedings tortured his mother not a little, and her 
anxiety would have led her often to interfere, had not the Major 
constantly checked, and at the same time encouraged her ; for 
the wily man of the world fancied he saw that a favorable turn 
had occurred in Pen’s malady. It was the violent efflux of ver* 


PEND ENNIS. 


* 5 * 

sification, among other symptoms, which gave Pen’s guardian 
and physician satisfaction. He might be heard spouting verses 
in the shrubbery walks, or muttering them between his teeth as 
he sat with the home party of evenings. One day prowling 
about the house in Pen’s absence, the Major found a great book 
full of verses in the lad’s study. They were in English, and 
in Latin ; quotations from the classic authors were given in the 
scholastic manner in the foot-notes. He can’t be very bad, 
wisely thought the Pall-Mall Philosopher : and he made Pen’s 
mother remark (not, perhaps, without a secret feeling of disap- 
pointment, for she loved romance like other soft women), that 
the young gentleman during the last fortnight came home quite 
hungry to dinner at night, and also showed a very decent appe- 
tite at the breakfast-table in the morning. “ Gad, I wish I 
could,” said the Major, thinking ruefully of his dinner pills. 
“The boy begins to sleep well, depend upon that.” It was 
cruel, but it was true. 

Having no other soul to confide in, the lad’s friendship for 
the Curate redoubled, or rather, he was never tired of having 
Smirke for a listener on that one subject. What is a lover 
without a confidant ? Pen employed Mr. Smirke, as Corydon 
does the elm-tree, to cut out his mistress’s name upon. He 
made him echo with the name of the beautiful Amaryllis. 
When men have left off playing the tune, they do not care much 
for the pipe : but Pen thought he had a great friendship for 
Smirke, because he could sigh out his loves and griefs into his 
tutor’s ears ; and Smirke had his own reasons for always being 
ready at the lad’s call. 

The poor Curate was naturally very much dismayed at the 
contemplated departure of his pupil. When Arthur should go, 
Smirke’s occupation and delight would go too. What pretext 
could he find for a daily visit to Fairoaks, and that kind word 
or glance from the lady there, which was as necessary to the 
Curate as the frugal dinner which Madame Fribsby served him ? 
Arthur gone, he would only be allowed to make visits like any 
other acquaintance : little Laura could not accommodate him by 
learning the Catechism more than once a week : he had curled 
himself like ivy round Fairoaks : he pined at the thought that 
he must lose his hold of the place. Should he speak his mind 
and go down on his knees to the widow ? He thought over any 
indications in her behavior which flattered his hopes. She had 
praised his sermon three weeks before : she had thanked him 
exceedingly for his present of a melon, for a small dinner party 
which Mrs. Pendennis gave : she said she should always be 


PENDENN1S. 


*52 

grateful to him for his kindness to Arthur : and when he de- 
clared that there were no bounds to his love and affection for 
that dear boy, she had certainly replied in a romantic manner, 
indicating her own strong gratitude and regard to all her son’s 
friends. Should he speak out ? — or should he delay ? If he 
spoke and she refused him, it was awful to think that the gate 
of Fairoaks might be shut upon him for ever — and within that 
door lay all the world for Mr. Smirke. 

Thus, oh friendly readers, we see how every man in the world 
has his own private griefs and business, by which he is more 
cast down or occupied than by the affairs or sorrows of any 
other person. While Mrs. Pendennis is disquieting herself 
about losing her son, and that anxious hold she has of him, as 
long as he has remained in the mother’s nest whence he is 
about to take flight into the great world beyond — while the 
Major’s great soul chafes and frets, inwardly vexed as he 
thinks what great parties are going on in London, and that he 
might be sunning himself in the glances of Dukes and Duchesses 
but for those cursed affairs which keep him in a wretched little 
country hole — while Pen is tossing between his passion and a 
more agreeable sensation, unacknowledged yet, but swaying 
him considerably, namely, his longing to see the world — Mr. 
Smirke has a private care watching at his bedside, and sitting 
behind him on his pony ; and is no more satisfied than the rest 
of us. How lonely we are in the world ! how selfish and secret, 
everybody ! You and your wife have pressed the same pillow 
for forty years and fancy yourselves united. — Psha, does she 
cry out when you have the gout, or do you lie awake when she 
has the toothache ? Your artless daughter, seemingly all 
innocence and devoted to her mamma and her piano-lesson, is 
thinking of neither, but of the young Lieutenant with whom she 
danced at the last ball — the honest frank boy just returned 
from school is secretly speculating upon the money you will 
give him, and the -debts he owes the tart-man. The old grand- 
mother crooning in the corner and bound to another world 
'within a few months, has some business or cares which are 
quite private and her own — very likely she is thinking of fifty 
years back, and that night when she made such an impression, 
and danced a cotillon with the Captain before your father 
proposed for her : or, what a silly little over-rated creature 
your wife is, and how absurdly you are infatuated about her — 
and, as for your wife — O philosophic reader, answer and say, 
* — Do you tell her all ? Ah, sir — a distinct universe walks 
about under your hat and under mine— all things in nature are 


PENDENNIS . 


x 53 


different to each — the woman we look at has not the same 
features, the dish we eat from not the same taste to the one 
and the other — you and I are but a pair of infinite isolations, 
with some fellow-islands a little more or less near to us. Let 
us return, however, to the solitary Smirke. 

Smirke had one confidant for his passion — that most inju- 
dicious woman, Madame Fribsby. How she became Madame 
Fribsby, nobody knows: she had left Clavering to goto a 
milliner’s in London as Miss Fribsby — she pretended that she 
had got the rank in Paris during her residence in that city. 
But how could the French king, were he ever so much disposed, 
give her any such title ? We shall not inquire into this mystery, 
however. Suffice to say, she went away from home a bouncing 
young lass ; she returned a rather elderly character, with a 
Madonna front and a melancholy countenance — bought the late 
Mrs. Harbottle’s business for a song — took her elderly mother 
to live with her ; was very good to the poor, was constant at 
church, and had the best of characters. But there was no one 
in all Clavering, not Mrs. Portman herself, who read so many 
novels as Madame Fribsby. She had plenty of time for this 
amusement, for, in truth, very few people besides the folks at 
the Rectory and Fairoaks employed her ; and by a perpetual 
perusal of such works (which were by no mean so moral or 
edifying in the days of which we write, as they are at present), 
she had got to be so absurdly sentimental, that in her eyes life 
was nothing but an immense love match ; and she never could 
see two people together, but she fancied they were dying for 
one another. 

On the day after Mrs. Pendennis’s visit to the Curate, which 
we have recorded many pages back, Madame Fribsby settled 
in her mind that Mr. Smirke must be in love with the widow, 
and did everything in her power to encourage this passion on 
both sides. Mrs. Pendennis she very seldom saw, indeed, 
except in public, and in her pew qt church. That lady had 
very little need of millinery, or made most of her own dresses 
and caps ; but on the rare occasions when Madame Fribsby 
received visits from Mrs. Pendennis, or paid her respects at 
Fairoaks, she never failed to entertain the widow with praises 
of the Curate, pointing out what an angelical man he was, how 
gentle, how studious, how lonely ; and she would wonder that 
no lady would take pity upon him. 

Helen laughed at these sentimental remarks, and wondered 
that Madame herself did not compassionate her lodger, and 
console him. Madame Fribsby shook her Madonna front 


154 


PEND ENNIS. 


Mo?ig cure a boco souffare,” she said, laying her hand on the 
part she designated as her cure. II est more en Espang, Ma- 
dame,” she said with a sigh. She was proud of her intimacy 
with the French language, and spoke it with more volubility 
than correctness. Mrs. Pendennis did not care to penetrate 
the secrets of this wounded heart : except to her few intimates 
she was a reserved, and it may be a very proud woman ; she 
looked upon her son’s tutor merely as an attendant on that 
young Prince, to be treated with respect as a clergyman cer- 
tainly, but with proper dignity as a dependent on the house of 
Pendennis. Nor were Madame’s constant allusions to the 
Curate particularly agreeable to her. It required a very ingen- 
ious sentimental turn indeed to find out that the widow had a 
secret regard for Mr. Smirke, to which pernicious error how- 
ever Madame Fribsby persisted in holding. 

Her lodger was very much more willing to talk on this sub- 
ject with his soft-hearted landlady. Every time after that she 
praised the Curate to Mrs. Pendennis, she came away from the 
latter with the notion that the widow herself had been praising 
him. “ Etre soul au monde est bie?i ouneeyong ,” she would say, 
glancing up at a print of a French carbineer in a green coat 
and brass cuirass which decorated her apartment — “ Depend 
upon it when Master Pendennis goes to college, his Ma will 
find herself very lonely. She is quite youngyer. — You wouldn’t 
suppose her to be five-and-twenty. Monsieur le Cury, song cure 
est touchy— f ong suis sure — ye conny cela biang — Ally Monsieur 
Smirke A 

He softly blushed ; he sighed ; he hoped ; he feared ; he 
doubted ; he sometimes yielded to the delightful idea — his 
pleasure was to sit in Madame Fribsby’s apartment, and talk 
upon the subject, where, as the greater part of the conversation 
was carried on in French by the Milliner, and her old mother 
was deaf, that retired old individual (who had once been a 
housekeeper, wife and widow of a butler in the Clavering family), 
could understand scarce one syllable of their talk. 

When Major Pendennis announced to his nephew’s tutor 
that the young fellow would go to College in October, and that 
Mr. Smirke’s valuable services would no longer be needful to 
his pupil, for which services the Major, who spoke as grandly, 
as a lord, professed himself exceedingly grateful, and besought 
Mr. Smirke to command his interest in any way — the Curate 
felt that the critical moment was come for him, and was racked 
and. tortured by those severe pangs which the occasion war- 
ranted. 


PENDENNIS. 


55 


And now that Arthur was going away, Helen’s heart was 
rather softened towards the Curate, from whom, perhaps divin- 
ing his intentions, she had shrunk hitherto : she bethought her 
how very polite Mr. Smirke had been ; how he had gone on 
messages for her ; how he had brought books and copied 
music : how he had taught Laura so many things, and given 
her so many kind presents. Her heart smote her on account 
of her ingratitude towards the Curate : — so much so, that one 
afternoon when he came down from study with Pen, and was 
hankering about the hall previous to his departure, she went 
out and shook hands with him with rather a blushing face, and 
begged him to come into her drawing-room, where she said 
they now never saw him. And as there was to be rather a good 
dinner that day, she invited Mr. Smirke to partake of it ; and 
we may be sure that he was too happy to accept such a de- 
lightful summons. 

Helen was exceedingly kind and gracious to Mr. Smirke 
during dinner, redoubling her attentions, perhaps because 
Major Pendennis was very high and reserved with his nephew’s 
tutor. When Pendennis asked Smirke to drink wine, he ad- 
dressed him as if he was a Sovereign speaking to a petty re- 
tainer, in a manner so condescending, that even Pen laughed 
at it, although quite ready, for his part, to be as conceited as 
most young men are. 

But Smirke did not care for the impertinences of the Major 
so long as he had his hostess’s kind behavior ; and he passed 
a delightful time by her side at table, exerting all his powers of 
conversation to please her, "alking in a manner both clerical 
and worldly, about the fancy Bazaar, and the Great Missionary 
Meeting, about the last new novel, and the Bishop’s excellent 
sermon — about the fashionable parties in London, an account 
of which he read in the newspapers — in fine, he neglected no 
art, by which a College divine who has both sprightly and 
serious talents, a taste for the genteel, an irreproachable con- 
duct, and a susceptible heart, will try and make, himself agree 
able to the person on whom he has fixed his affections. 

Major Pendennis came yawning out of the dining-room very 
soon after his sister and little Laura had left the apartment. 

Now Arthur, flushed with a good deal of pride at the privi- 
lege of haying the keys of the cellar, and remembering that a 
very few more dinners would probably take place which he and 
his dear friend Smirke could share, had brought up a liberal 
supply of claret for the company’s drinking, and when the 
elders with little Laura left him, he and the Curate began to 
pass the wine very freely. 


PENDENNIS . 


*56 

One bottle speedily yielded up the ghost, another shed 
more than half its blood, before the two topers had been much 
more than half an hour together — Pen, with a hollow laugh 
and voice, had drunk off one bumper to the falsehood of women, 
and had said sardonically, that wine at any rate was a mistress 
who never deceived, and was sure to give a man a welcome. 

Smirke gently said that he knew for his part some women 
who were all truth and tenderness ; and casting up his eyes 
towards the ceiling, and heaving a sigh as if evoking some 
being dear and unmentionable, he took up his glass and drained 
it, and the rosy liquor began to suffuse his face. 

Pen trolled over some verses he had been making that 
morning, in which he informed himself that the woman who had 
slighted his passion could not be worthy to win it : that he was 
awaking from love’s mad fever, and, of course, under these 
circumstances, preceded to leave her, and to quit a heartless 
deceiver : that a name which had one day been famous in the' 
land, might again be heard in it : and, that though he never 
should be the happy and careless boy he was but a few months 
since, or his heart be what it had been ere passion had filled it 
and grief had well nigh killed it ; that though to him personally 
death was as welcome as life, and that he would not hesitate 
to part with the latter, but for the love of one kind being whose 
happiness depended on his own, — yet he hoped to show he 
was a man worthy of his race, and that one day the false one 
should be brought to know how great was the treasure and 
noble the heart which she had flung away. 

Pen, we say, who was a very excitable person, rolled out 
these verses in his rich sweet voice, which trembled with 
emotion whilst our young poet spoke. He had a trick of blush- 
ing when in this excited state, and his large and honest gray 
eyes also exhibited proofs of a sensibility so genuine, hearty, 
and manly, that Miss Costigan, if she had a heart, must needs 
have softened toward him ; and very likely she was, as he said, 
altogether unworthy of the affection which he lavished upon 
her. 

The sentimental Smirke was caught by the emotion which 
agitated his young friend. He grasped Pen’s hand over the 
dessert dishes and wine glasses. He said the verses were 
beautiful : that Pen was a poet, a great poet, and likely by 
Heaven’s permission to run a great career in the world. “ Go 
on and prosper, dear Arthur,” he cried : “ the wounds under 
which at present you suffer are only temporary, and the very 
grief you endure will cleanse and strengthen your heart. I 


PENDENNIS. 


x 57 

have always prophesied the greatest and brightest things of you, 
as soon as you have corrected some failings and weaknesses of 
character, which at present belong to you. But you will get 
over these, my boy, you will get over these ; and when you are 
famous and celebrated, as I know you will be, will you re- 
member your old tutor and the happy early days of your 
youth ? ” 

Pen swore he would : with another shake of the hand across 
the glasses and apricots. “ I shall never forget how kind you 
have been to me, Smirke,” he said. “ I don’t know what I 
should have done without you. You are my best friend.” 

“ Am I really , Arthur ? ” said Smirke, looking through his 
spectacles ; and his heart began to beat so that he thought Pen 
must almost hear it throbbing. 

“ My best friend, my friend for ever,” Pen said. “ God 
bless you, old boy,” and he drank up the last glass of the 
second bottle of the famous wine which his father had laid in, 
which his uncle had brought, which Lord Levant had imported, 
and which now, like a slave indifferent, was ministering pleasure 
to its present owner, and giving its young master delectation. 

“We’ll have another bottle, old boy,” Pen said, “by Jove 
we will. Hurray ! — claret goes for nothing. My uncle was 
telling me that he saw Sheridan drink five bottles at Brookes’s, 
besides a bottle of Maraschino. This is some of the finest 
wine in England, he says. So it is by Jove. There’s nothing 
like it. Nunc vino pellite curas — eras ingens iterabimus oeq — fill 
your glass, Old Smirke, a hogshead of it won’t do you any 
harm.” And Mr. Pen began to sing the drinking song out of 
Der Freischiitz. The dining-room windows were open, and his 
mother was softly pacing on the lawn outside, while little Laura 
was looking at the sunset. The sweet fresh notes of the boy’s 
voice came to the widow. It cheered her kind heart to hear 
him sing. 

“ You — you are taking too much wine, Arthur,” Mr. Smirke 
said softly — “ you are exciting yourself.” 

“No,” said Pen, “women give headaches, but this don’t. 
Fill your glass, old fellow, and let’s drink — I say, Smirke, my 
boy — let’s drink to her — your her, I mean, not mine, for whom I 
swear I’ll care no more — no, not a penny — no, not a fig, — no, 
not a glass of wine. Tell us about the lady, Smirke ; I’ve often 
seen you sighing about her.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Smirke — and his beautiful cambric shirt front 
and glistening studs heaved with the emotion which agitated 
his gentle and suffering bosom. 


PENDENNIS. 


158 

“ Oh — what a sigh ! ” Pen cried, growing very hilarious *. 
“ fill, my boy, and drink the toast, you can’t refuse a toast, no 
gentleman refuses a toast. Here’s her health, and good luck 
to you, and may she soon be Mrs. Smirke.” 

“ Do you say so ? ” Smirke said, all of a tremble. “ Do you 
really say so, Arthur ? ” 

“ Say so ; of course, I say so. Down with it. Here’s Mrs. 
Smirke’s good health : Hip, hip, hurray ! ” 

Smirke convulsively gulped down his glass of wine, and 
Pen waved his over his head, cheering so as to make his 
mother and Laura wonder on the lawn, and his uncle, who was 
dozing over the paper in the drawing-room, start, and say to 
himself, “ that boy’s drinking too much.” Smirke put down 
the glass. 

“ I accept the omen,” gasped out the blushing Curate. “ Oh, 
my dear Arthur, you — you know her — ” 

“ What — Mira Portman ? I wish you joy : she’s got a dev- 
’lish large waist ; but I wish you joy, old fellow.” 

“ Oh, Arthur ! ” groaned the Curate again, and nodded his 
head, speechless. 

“ Beg your pardon — sorry I offended you — but she has got 
a large waist, you know — devilish large waist,” Pen continued 
— the third bottle evidently beginning to act upon the young 
gentleman. 

“ It’s not Miss Portman,” the other said, in a voice of 
agony. 

“ Is it anybody at Chatteris or at Clapham ? Somebody 
here ? No — it ain’t old Pybus ? it can’t be Miss Rolt at the 
Factory — she’s only fourteen.” 

“ It’s somebody rather older than I am, Pen,” the Curate 
cried, looking up at his friend, and then guiltily casting his eyes 
down into his plate. 

Pen burst out laughing. “ It’s Madame Fribsby, by Jove, 
it’s Madame Fribsby. Madame Frib. by the immortal Gods ! ” 

The Curate could contain no more. “ O Pen,” he cried, 
“ how can you suppose that any of those — of those more than 
ordinary beings you have named — could have an influence upon 
this heart, when I have been daily in the habit of contemplat- 
ing perfection ! I may be insane, I may be madly ambitious, I 
may be presumptuous — but for two years my heart has been 
filled by one image, and has known no other idol. Haven’t I 
loved you as a son, Arthur ? — say, hasn’t Charles Smirke loved 
you as a son ? ” 

“Yes, old boy, you’ve been very good to me,” Pen said, 


PENDENMIS. 


*59 


whose liking, however, for his tutor was not by any means of 
the filial kind. 

My means,” rushed on Smirke, “ are at present limited, I 
own, and my mother is not so liberal as might be desired ; but 
what she has will be mine at her death. Were she to hear of 
my marrying a lady of rank and good fortune, my mother would 
be liberal, I am sure she would be liberal. Whatever I have 
or subsequently inherit — and it’s five hundred a year at the very 
leat t — would be settled upon her, and — and — and you at my 
death — that is — ” 

“ What the deuce do you mean ? — and what have I to do 
with your money ? ” cried out Pen, in a puzzle. 

“ Arthur, Arthur ! ” exclaimed the other wildly ; “You say 
I am your dearest friend — Let me be more. Oh, can’t .you see 
that the angelic being I love — the purest, the best of women 
— is no other than your dear, dear angel of a — mother.” 

“ My mother ! ” cried out Arthur, jumping up and sober in 
a minute. “ Pooh ! damn it, Smirke, you must be mad — she’s 
seven or eight years older than you are.” 

“ Did you find that any objection ? ” cried Smirke piteously, 
and alluding, of course, to the elderly subject of Pen’s own 
passion. 

The lad felt the hint, and blushed quite red. “ The cases 
are not similar, Smirke,” he said, “ and the allusion might have 
been spared. A man may forget his own rank and elevate any 
woman to it ; but allow me to say our positions are very dif 
ferent.” 

“ How do you mean, dear Arthur ? ” the Curate interposed 
sadly, cowering as he felt that his sentence was about to be read. 

“ Mean ? ” said Arthur. “ I mean what I say. My tutor, J 
say my tutor, has no right to ask a lady of my mother’s rank of 
life to marry him. It’s a breach of confidence. I say it’s a 
liberty you take, Smirke — it’s a liberty. Mean, indeed ! ” 

“ O Arthur ! ” the Curate began to cry with clasped hands, 
and a scared face, but Arthur gave another stamp with his foot, 
and began to pull at the bell. “ Don’t let’s have any more of 
this. We’ll have some coffee, if you please,” he said with a 
majestic air : and the old butler entering at the summons, 
Arthur bade him to serve that refreshment. 

John said he had just carried coffee into the drawing-room, 
where his uncle was asking for Master Arthur, and the old man 
gave a glance of wonder at the three empty claret-bottles. 
Smirke said he thought he’d — he’d rather not go into the 
drawing-room, on which Arthur haughtily said “ As you please,” 


i6o 


PENDENNIS. 


and called for Mr. Smirke’s horse to be brought round. The 
poor fellow said he knew the way to the stable and would get 
his pony himself, and he went into the hall and sadly put on 
his coat and hat. 

Pen followed him out uncovered. Helen was still walking 
up and down the soft lawn as the sun was setting, and the 
Curate took off his hat and bowed by way of farewell, and 
passed on to the door leading to the stable court by which the 
pair disappeared. Smirke knew the way to the stable as he 
said, well enough. He fumbled at the girths of the saddle, 
which Pen fastened for him, and put on the bridle and led the 
pony into the yard. The boy was touched by the grief which 
appeared in the other’s face as he mounted. Pen held out his 
hand, and Smirke wrung it silently. 

“ I say, Smirke,” he said in an agitated voice, “forgive me 
if I have said anything harsh — for you have always been very, 
very kind to me. But it can’t be, old fellow, it can’t be. Be a 
man. God bless you.” 

Smirke nodded his head silently, and rode out of the lodge 
gate : and Pen looked after him for a couple of minutes, until 
he disappeared down the road, and the clatter of the pony’s 
hoofs died away. Helen was still lingering on the lawn waiting 
until the boy came back — she put his hair off his forehead and 
kissed it fondly. She was afraid he had been drinking too 
much wine. Why had Mr. Smirke gone away without any tea ? 

He looked at her with a kind humor beaming in his eyes ; 
“ Smirke is unwell,” he said with a laugh. For a long while 
Helen had not seen the boy looking so cheerful. He put his 
arm round her waist, and walked her up and down the walk in 
front of the house. Laura began to drub on the drawing-room 
window and nod and laugh from it. “ Come along you two 
people,” cried out Major Pendennis, “ your coffee is getting 
quite cold.” 

When Laura was gone to bed, Pen, who was big with his 
secret, burst out with it, and described the dismal but ludicrous 
scene which had occurred. Helen heard of it with many 
blushes, which became her pale face very well, and a perplexity 
which Arthur roguishly enjoyed. 

“ Confound the fellow’s impudence,” Major Pendennis said 
as he took his candle, “where will the assurance of these people 
stop ? ” Pen and his mother had a long talk that night, full of 
love, confidence, and laughter, and the boy somehow slept 
more soundly and woke up more easily than he had done foi 
many months before. 


PEND ENNIS. 


161 


Before the great Mr. Dolphin quitted Chatteris, he not only 
made an advantageous' engagement with Miss Fotheringay, but 
he liberally left with her a sum of money to pay off any debts 
which the little family might have contracted during their stay 
in the place, and which mainly through the lady’s own economy 
and management, were not considerable. The -small account 
with the spirit merchant, which Major Pendennis had settled, 
was the chief of Captain Costigan’s debts, and though the 
Captain at one time talked about repaying every farthing of 
the money, it never appears that he executed his menace, nor 
did the laws of honor in the least call upon him to accomplish 
that threat. 

When Miss Costigan had seen all the outstanding bills paid 
to the uttermost shilling, she handed over the balance to her 
father, who broke out into hospitalities to all his friends, gave 
the little Creeds more apples and gingerbread than he had ever 
bestowed upon them; so that the widow Creed ever after held 
the memory of her lodger in veneration, and the young ones 
wept bitterly when he went away ; and in a word managed 
the money so cleverly that it was entirely expended before 
many days, and he was compelled to draw upon Mr. Dolphin 
for a sum to pay for travelling expenses when the time of their 
departure arrived. 

There was held at an inn in that county town a weekly 
meeting of a festive, almost a riotous character, of a society of 
gentlemen who called themselves the Buccaneers. Some of the 
choice spirits of Chatteris belonged to this cheerful club. 
Graves, the apothecary (than whom a better fellow never put a 
pipe in his mouth and smoked it), Smart, the talented and 
humorous portrait-painter of High Street, Croker, an excellent 
auctioneer, and the uncompromising Hicks, the able Editor for 
twenty-three years of the County Chronicle and Chatteris 
Champion, were amongst the crew of the Buccaneers, whom 
also Bingley, the manager, liked to join of a Saturday evening, 
whenever he received permission from his lady. 

Costigan had been also an occasional Buccaneer. But a 
want of punctuality of payments had of late somewhat excluded 
him from the Society, where he was subject to disagreeable 
remarks from the landlord, who said that a Buccaneer who 
didn’t pay his shot was utterly unworthy to be a Marine Ban- 
dit. But when it became known to the ’Ears, as the Clubbists 
called themselves familiarly, that Miss Fotheringay had made 
a splendid engagement, a great revolution of feeling took place 
in the club regarding Captain Costigan. Solly, mine host of 

ii 


r62 


PENDEMNIS. 


the Grapes, told the gents in the Buccaneers’ room one night 
how noble the Captain had behaved ; having been round and 
paid off all his ticks in Chatteris* including his score of three 
pounds fourteen here — and pronounced that Cos was a good 
fellar, a gentleman at bottom, and he, Solly, had always said 
so, and finally worked upon the feelings of the Buccaneers to 
give the Captain a dinner. 

The banquet took place on the last night of Costigan’s stay 
at Chatteris, and was served in Solly’s accustomed manner. 
As good a plain dinner of old English fare as ever smoked on 
a table was prepared by Mrs. Solly; and about eighteen gen- 
tleman sat down to the festive board. Mr. Jubber (the emi- 
nent draper of High Street) was in the Chair, having the distin- 
guished guest of the Club on his right. The able and consis- 
tent Hicks officiated as croupier on the occasion ; most of the 
gentlemen of the Club were present, and # H. Foker, Esq., and 
Spavin, Esq., friends of Captain Costigan, were also par- 
ticipators in the entertainment. The cloth having been drawn, 
the Chairman said, “ Costigan, there is wine, if you like,” but 
the Captain preferring punch, that liquor was voted by accla- 
mation ; and “ Non Nobis ” having been sung in admirable 
style by Messrs. Bingley, Flicks, and Bullby (of the Cathedral 
choir, than whom a more jovial spirit “ ne’er tossed off a bum- 
per or emptied a bowl ”), the Chairman gave the health of the 
“ King! ” which was drunk with the loyalty of Chatteris men, 
and then, without further circumlocution, proposed their friend 
“ Captain Costigan.” 

After the enthusiastic cheering, which rang through old 
Chatteris, had subsided, Captain Costigan rose in reply, and 
made a speech of twenty minutes, in which he was repeatedly 
overcome by his emotions. 

The gallant Captain said he must be pardoned for incoher- 
ence, if his heart was too full to speak. He was quitting a city 
celebrated for its antiquitee, its hospitalitee, the beautee of its 
women, the manly fidelitee, generositee, and jovialitee of its 
men. (Cheers.) He was going from that ancient and vener- 
able city, of which, while Mimoree held her sayt, he should 
never think without the fondest emotion, to a methrawpolis 
where the talents of his daughter were about to have full 
play, and where he would watch over her like a guardian angel. 
He should never forget that it was at Chatteris she had ac- 
quired the skill which she was about to exercise in another 
sphere, and in her name and his own, Jack Costigan thanked, 
and blessed them. The gallant officer’s speech was received 
with tremendous cheers. 


PENDENNIS. 163 

Mr. Hicks, Croupier, in a brilliant and energetic manner, 
proposed Miss Fotheringay’s health. 

Captain Costigan returned thanks in a speech full of feel- 
ing and eloquence. 

Mr. Jubber proposed the Drama and the Chatteris Theatre, 
and Mr. Bingley was about to rise, but was prevented by Cap- 
tain Costigan, who, as long connected with the Chatteris Thea- 
tre, and on behalf of his daughter, thanked the Company. He 
informed them that he had been in garrison, at Gibraltar, and 
at Malta, and had been at the taking of Flushing. The Duke 
of York was a patron of the Drama; he had the honor of din- 
ing with His Royal Highness and the Duke of Kent many 
times ; and the former had justly been named the friend of the 
soldier. (Cheers.) 

The Army was then proposed, and Captain Costigan re- 
turned thanks. In the course of the night, he sang his well- 
known songs, “ The Deserter,” “ The Shan Van Voght,” 
“The Little Pig under the Bed,” and “ The Vale of Avoca.” 
The evening was a great triumph for him — it ended. All tri- 
umphs and all evenings end. And the next day, Miss Costigan 
having taken leave of all her friends, having been reconciled 
to Miss Rouncy, to whom she left a necklace and a white satin 
gown — the next day, he and Miss Costigan had places in the 
Competitor coach rolling by the gates of Fairoaks Lodge — and 
Pendennis never saw them. 

Tom Smith, the coachman, pointed out Fairoaks to Mr. 
Costigan, who sat on the box smelling of rum-and-water — and 
the Captain said it was a poor place — and added, “Ye should 
see Castle Costigan, County Mayo, me boy,” — which Tom said 
he should like very much to see. 

They were gone, and Pen had never seen them ! He only 
knew of their departure by its announcement in the county 
paper the next day : and straight galloped over to Chatteris to 
hear the truth of this news. They were gone indeed. A card 
of “ Lodgings to let,” was placed in the dear little familiar 
window. He rushed up into the room and viewed it over. He 
sat ever so long in the old window-seat looking into the Dean’s 
Garden : whence he and Emily had so often looked out to- 
gether. He walked, with a sort of terror, into her little empty 
bedroom. It was swept out and prepared for new-comers. 
The glass which had reflected her fair face was shining ready 
for her successor. The curtains lay square folded on the little 
bed : he flung himself down and buried his head on the vacant 
^pillow. 

Laura had netted a purse into which his mother had put 


PENDENNIS. 


164 

some sovereigns, and Pen had found it on his dressing-table 
that very morning. He gave one to the little servant who had 
been used to wait upon the Costigans, and another to the chi:- 
dren, because they said they were very fond of her. It was but 
a few months back, yet what years ago it seemed since he had 
first entered that room ! He felt that it was all done. The very 
missing her at the coach had something fatal in it. Blank, 
weary, utterly wretched and lonely the poor lad felt. 

His mother saw She was gone by his look when he came 
home. He was eager to fly too now, as were other folks round 
about Chatteris. Poor Smirke wanted to go away from the 
sight of the siren widow, Foker began to think he had had 
enough of Baymouth, and that a few supper- parties at Saint 
Boniface would not be unpleasant. And Major Pendennis 
longed to be off, and have a little pheasant-shooting at Still- 
brook, and get rid of all the annoyances and tracas-series of the 
village. The widow and Laura nervously set about the pre- 
parations for Pen’s kit, and filled trunks with his books and 
linen. Helen wrote cards with the name of Arthur Pendennis, 
Esq., which were duly nailed on the boxes ; and at which both 
she and Laura looked with tearful, wistful eyes. It was not 
until long, long after he was gone, that Pen remembered how 
constant and tender the affection of these women had been, 
and how selfish his own conduct was. 

A night soon comes, when the mail, with echoing horn and 
blazing lamps, stops at the lodge-gate of Fairoaks, and Pen’s 
trunks and his Uncle’s are placed on the roof of the carriage, 
into which the pair presently afterwards enter. Helen and 
Laura are standing by the evergreens of the shrubbery, their 
figures lighted up by the coach lamps ; the guard cries “ all 
right : ” in another instant the carriage whirls onward ; the 
lights disappear, and Helen’s heart and prayers go with them. 
Her sainted benedictions follow the departing boy. He has 
left the home-nest in which he has been chafing, and whither, 
after his very first flight, he returned bleeding and wounded ; 
he is eager to go forth again and try his restless wings. 

How lonely the house looks without him ! The corded 
trunks and book-boxes are there in his empty study. Laura 
asks leave to come and sleep in Helen’s room : and when she 
has cried herself to sleep there, the mother goes softly into 
Pen’s vacant chamber, and kneels down by the bed on which 
the moon is shining, and there prays for her boy, as mothers 
only know how to plead. He knows that her pure blessings 
are following him, as he is carried miles away. 


PENDENNIS. 


1*5 


CHAPTER XVII. 

ALMA MATER. 

Every man, however brief or inglorious may have been his 
academical career, must remember with kindness and tenderness 
the old university comrades and days. The young man’s life is 
just beginning : the boy’s leading strings are cut, and he has 
all the novel delights and dignities of freedom. He has no 
idea of cares yet, or of bad health, or of roguery, or poverty, or 
to-morrow’s disappointment. The play has not been acted so 
often as to make him tired. Though the after-drink, as we 
mechanically go on repeating it, is stale and bitter, how pure 
and brilliant was that first sparkling draught of pleasure ! — How 
the boy rushes at the cup, and with what a wild eagerness he 
drains it ! But old epicures who are cut off from the delights 
of the table, and are restricted to a poached egg and a glass of 
water, like to see people with good appetites : and, as the next 
best thing to being amused at a pantomime one’s-self is to see 
one’s children enjoy it, I hope there may be no degree of age 
or experience to which mortal may attain, when he shall become 
such a glum philosopher, as not to be pleased by the sight of 
happy youth. Coming back a few weeks since from a brief 
visit to the old University of Oxbridge, where my friend Mr. 
Arthur Pendennis passed some period of his life, I made the 
journey in the railroad by the side of a young fellow at present 
a student of Saint Boniface. He had got an exeat somehow, 
and was bent on a day’s lark in London : he never stopped 
rattling and talking from the commencement of the journey 
until its close (which was a great deal too soon for me, for I 
never was tired of listening to the honest young fellow’s jokes 
and cheery laughter) ; and when we arrived at the terminus 
nothing would satisfy him but a Hansom cab, so that he might 
get into town the quicker, and plunge into the pleasures await- 
ing him there. Away the young lad went whirling, with joy 
lighting up his honest face ; and as for the reader’s humble 
servant, having but a small carpet-bag, I got up on the outside 
of the omnibus, and sat there very contentedly between a Jew 
pedlar smoking bad cigars, and a gentleman’s servant taking 
care of a poodle-dog, until we got our fated complement of pas- 
sengers and boxes, when the coachman drove leisurely away. 


i66 


PENDENNIS. 


We weren’t in a hurry to get to town. Neither one of us was 
particularly eager about rushing into that near smoking Babylon, 
or thought of dining at the Club that night, or dancing at the 
Casino. Yet a few years more, and my young friend of the 
railroad will be not a whit more eager. 

There were no railroads made when Arthur Pendennis went 
to the famous University of Oxbridge ; but he drove thither in 
a well-appointed coach, filled inside and out with dons, gowns- 
men, young freshmen about to enter, and their guardians, who 
were conducting them to the university. A fat old gentleman, 
in gray stockings, from the City, who sat by Major Pendennis 
inside the coach, having his pale-faced son opposite, was fright- 
ened beyond measure, when he heard that the coach had been 
driven for a couple of stages by young Mr. Foker, of Saint 
Boniface College, who was the friend of all men, including 
coachmen, and could drive as well as Tom Hicks himself. Pen 
sat on the roof, examining coach, passengers, and country, 
with great delight and curiosity. His heart jumped with pleasure 
as the famous university came in view, and the magnificent 
prospect of venerable towers and pinnacles, tall elms and shin- 
ing river, spread before him. 

Pen had passed a few days with his uncle at the Major’s 
lodgings, in Bury Street, before they set out for Oxbridge. 
Major Pendennis thought that the lad’s wardrobe wanted 
renewal ; and Arthur was by no means averse to any plan which 
was to bring him new coats and waistcoats. There was no end 
to the sacrifices which the self-denying uncle made in the youth’s 
behalf. London was awfully lonely. The Pall Mall pavement 
was deserted ; the very red-jackets had gone out of the town. 
There was scarce a face to be seen in the bow-windows of the 
clubs. The Major conducted his nephew into one or two of 
those desert mansions, and wrote down the lad’s name on die 
candidate-list of one of them ; and Arthur’s pleasure at this com- 
pliment on his guardian’s part was excessive. He read in the 
parchment volume his name and titles, as “ Arthur Pendennis, 

Esquire, of Fairoaks Lodge, shire, and Saint Boniface 

College, Oxbridge ; proposed by Major Pendennis, and seconded 
by Viscount Colchicum,” with a thrill of intense gratification. 
“You will come in for ballot in about three years, by which 
time you will have taken your degree,” the guardian said. Pen 
longed for the three years to be over, and surveyed the stucco- 
halls, and vast libraries, and drawing-rooms, as already his own 
property. The Major laughed slyly to see the pompous airs of 
the simple young fellow, as he strutted out of the building. He 


PENDENNIS . 


167 

and Foker drove down in the latter’s cab one day tothe Grey 
Friars, and renewed acquaintance with some of their old com- 
rades there. The boys came crowding up to the cab as it stood 
by the Grey Friars gates, where they were entering, and admired 
the chestnut horse, and the tights and livery and gravity of 
Stoopid, the tiger. The bell for afternoon school rang as they 
were swaggering about the play-ground talking to their old 
cronies. The awful Doctor passed into school with his gram- 
mar in his hand. Foker slunk away uneasily at his presence, 
but Pen went up blushing, and shook the dignitary by the 
hand. He laughed as he thought that well-remembered Latin 
Grammar had boxed his ears many a time. He was generous,, 
good-natured, and, in a word, perfectly conceited and satisfied 
with himself. 

Then they drove to the parental brew-house. Foker’s Entire 
is composed in an enormous pile of buildings, not far from the 
Grey Friars, and the name of that well-known firm is gilded 
upon innumerable public-house signs, tenanted by its vassals in 
the neighborhood : the venerable junior partner and manager 
did honor to the young lord of the vats and his friend, and 
served them with silver flagons of brown-stout, so strong, that 
you would have thought, not only the young men, but the very 
horse Mr. Harry Foker drove, was affected by the potency of 
the drink, for he rushed home to the west-end of the town at a 
rapid pace, which endangered the pie-stalls and the women on 
the crossings, and brought the cab-steps into collision with the 
posts at the street corners, and caused Stoopid to swing fear- 
fully on his board behind. 

The Major was quite pleased when Pen was with his young 
acquaintance ; listened to Mr. Foker’s artless stories with the 
greatest interest : gave the two boys a fine dinner at a Covent 
Garden Coffee-house, whence they proceeded to the play ; but 
was above all happy when Mr. and Lady Agnes Foker, who 
happened to be in London, requested the pleasure of Major 
Pendennis and Mr. Arthur Pendennis’s company at dinner in 
Grosvenor Street. “ Having obtained the entree into Lady 
Agnes Foker’s house,” he said to Pen with an affectionate 
solemnity which befitted the importance of the occasion, “ it 
behoves you, my dear boy, to keep it. You must mind and 
never neglect to call in Grosvenor Street when you come to 
London. I recommend you to read up carefully, in Debrett, 
the alliances and genealogy of the Earls of Rosherville, and if 
you can, to make some trifling allusions to the family, some- 
thing historical, neat, and complimentary, and that sort of thing, 


PENDENNIS. 


1 68 

which you, who have a poetic fancy, can do pretty well. Mr. 
Foker himself is a worthy man, though not of high extraction 
or indeed much education. He always makes a point of having 
some of the family porter served round after dinner, which you 
will on no account refuse, and which I shall drink myself, 
though all beer disagrees with me confoundedly.” And the 
heroic martyr did actually sacrifice himself, as he said he would, 
on the day when the dinner took place, and old Mr. Foker, at 
the head of his table, made his usual joke about Foker’s Entire. 
We should all of us, I am sure, have liked to see the Major’s 
grin, when the worthy old gentleman made his time-honored 
joke. 

Lady Agnes, who, wrapped up in Harry, was the fondest 
of mothers, and one of the most good-natured though not the 
wisest of women, received her son’s friend with great cordiality ; 
and astonished Pen by accounts of the severe course of studies 
which her darling boy was pursuing, and which she feared might 
injure his dear health. Foker the elder burst into a horse-laugh 
at some of these speeches, and the heir of the house winked 
his eye very knowingly at his friend. And Lady Agnes then 
going through her son’s history from the earliest time, and re- 
counting his miraculous sufferings in the measles and whooping- 
cough, his escape from drowning, the shocking tyrannies prac- 
tised upon him at that horrid school, whither Mr. Foker would 
send him because he had been brought up there himself, and 
she never would forgive that disagreeable Doctor, no never — 
Lady Agnes, we say, having prattled away for an hour inces- 
santly about her son, voted the two Messieurs Pendennis most 
agreeable men ; and when the pheasants came with the second 
course, which the Major praised as the very finest birds he 
ever saw, her Ladyship said they came from Logwood (as the 
Major knew perfectly well) and hoped that they would both pay 
her a visit there — at Christmas, or when dear Harry was at 
home for the vacations. 

“ God bless you, my dear boy,” Pendennis said to Arthur, 
as they were lighting their candles in Bury Street afterwards to 
go to bed. “You made that little allusion to Agincourt, where 
one of the Roshervilles distinguished himself, very neatly and 
well, although Lady Agnes did not quite understand it : but it 
was exceedingly well for a beginner — though you oughtn’t to 
blush so, by the way — and I beseech you my dear Arthur, to 
remember through life, that with an entree — with a good e?itree, 
mind — it is just as easy for you to have good society as bad, 
and that it costs a man, when properly introduced, no more 


PENDENNIS. 


169 

trouble or soins to keep a good footing in the best houses in 
London than to dine with a lawyer in Bedford Square. Mind 
this when you are at Oxbridge pursuing your studies, and for 
Heaven’s sake be very particular in the acquaintances which 
you make. The premier pas in life is the most important of all 
— did you write to your mother to-day ? — No ? — well, do, before 
you go, and call and ask Mr. Foker for a frank — They like it — 
Good-night. God bless you.” 

Pen wrote a droll account of his doings in London, and the 
play, and the visit to the old Friars, and the brewery, and the 
party at Mr. Foker’s, to his dearest mother, who was saying her 
prayers at home in the lonely house at Fairoaks, her heart full 
of love and tenderness unutterable for the boy : and she and 
Laura read that letter and those which followed, many, many 
times, and brooded over them as women do. It was the first 
step in life that Pen was making — Ah ! what a dangerous jour- 
ney it is, and how the bravest may stumble and the strongest 
fail. Brother wayfarer ! may you have a kind arm to support 
yours on the path, and a friendly hand to succor those who fall 
beside you. May truth guide, mercy forgive at the end, and love 
accompany always. Without that lamp how blind the traveller 
would be, and how black and cheerless the journey ! 

So the coach drove up to that ancient and comfortable inn 
the Trencher, which stands in Main Street, Oxbridge, and Pen 
with delight and eagerness remarked, for the first time, gowns- 
men going about, chapel bells clinking (bells in Oxbridge are 
ringing from morning-tide till even-song), — towers and pinnacles 
rising calm and stately over the gables and antique house-roofs 
of the city. Previous communications had taken place between 
Dr. Portman on Pen’s part, and Mr. Buck, Tutor of Boniface, 
on whose side Pen was entered ; and as soon as Major Pen- 
dennis had arranged his personal appearance, so that it should 
make a satisfactory impression upon Pen’s tutor, the pair 
walked down Main Street, and passed the great gate and belfry- 
tower of Saint George’s College, and so came as they were 
directed to Saint Boniface, where again Pen’s heart began to 
beat as they entered at the wicket of the venerable .ivy-mantled 
gate of the College. It is surmounted with an ancient dome 
almost covered with creepers, and adorned with the effigy of 
the Saint from whom the house takes its name and many coats- 
of-arms of its royal and noble benefactors. 

The porter pointed out a queer old tower at the corner of 
the quadrangle, by which Mr. Buck’s rooms were approached, 
and the two gentlemen walked across the square, the main fea* 


PENDENNIS. 


170 

tures of which were at once and for ever stamped in Pen’s 
mind — the pretty fountain playing in the centre of the fair grass 
plots ; the tall chapel windows and buttresses rising to the 
right ; the hall, with its tapering lantern and oriel window ; th< 
lodge, from the doors of which the Master issued awfully in 
rustling silks : the lines of the surrounding rooms pleasantl} 
broken by carved chimnies, gray turrets, and quaint gables—’ 
all these Mr. Pen’s eyes drank in with an eagerness which be^ 
longs to first impressions ; and Major Pendennis surveyed with 
that calmness which belongs to a gentleman who does not care 
for the picturesque, and whose eyes have been somewhat dim- 
med by the constant glare of the pavement of Pall Mall. 

Saint George’s is the great College of the University of Ox- 
bridge, with its four vast quadrangles, and its beautiful hall and 
gardens, and the Georgians, as the men are called, wear gowns 
of a peculiar cut, and give themselves no small airs of superi- 
ority over all young men. Little Saint Boniface is but a petty 
hermitage in comparison of the huge consecrated pile alongside 
of which it lies. But considering its size it has always kept an 
excellent name in the university. Its ton is very good : the 
best families of certain counties have time out of mind sent up 
their young men to Saint Boniface : the college livings are 
remarkably good, the fellowships easy ; the Boniface men had 
. had more than their fair share of university honors ; their boat 
was third upon the river ; their chapel-choir is not inferior to 
Saint George’s itself ; and the Boniface ale the best in Ox- 
bridge. In the comfortable old wainscoted College-Hall, and 
round about Roubilliac’s statue of Saint Boniface (who stands 
in an attitude of seraphic benediction over the uncommonly 
good cheer of the fellows’ table) there are portraits of many 
most eminent Bonifacians. There is the learned Dr. Griddle, 
who suffered in Henry VIII. ’s time, and Archbishop Bush who 
roasted him — there is Lord Chief Justice Hicks — the Duke of 
St. David’s, K. G., Chancellor of the University and member of 
this College — Sprott the Poet, of whose fame the college is 
justly proud — Doctor Blogg, the late master, and friend of 
Doctor Johnson, who visited him at St. Boniface — and other 
lawyers, scholars, and divines, whose portraitures look from the 
walls, or whose coats-of-arms shine in emerald and ruby, gold 
and azure, in the tall windows of the refectory. The venerable 
cook of the college is one of the best artists in Oxbridge, and 
the wine in the fellows’ room has long been famed for its ex- 
cellence and abundance. 

Into this, certainly not the least snugly sheltered arbor 


PENDENNIS . 


171 

amongst the groves of Academe, Pen now found his way, lean- 
ing on his uncle’s arm, and they speedily reached Mr. Buck’s 
rooms, and were conducted into the apartment of that courteous 
gentleman. 

He had received previous information from Dr Portman re- 
garding Pen, with respect to whose family, fortune, and personal 
merits the honest doctor had spoken with no small enthusiasm. 
Indeed Portman had described Arthur to the tutor as “a 
young gentleman of some fortune and landed estate, of one of 
the most ancient families in the kingdom, and possessing such 
a character and genius as were sure, under proper guidance, 
to make him a credit to the college and the university.” 
Under such recommendations, the tutor was, of course, most 
cordial to the young freshman and his guardian, invited the 
latter to dine in hall, where he would have the satisfaction of 
seeing his nephew wear his gown and eat his dinner for the 
first time, and requested the pair to take wine at his rooms 
after hall, and in consequence of the highly-favorable report he 
had received of Mr. Arthur Pendennis, said, he should he happy 
to give him the best set of rooms to be had in college — a gen- 
tleman-pensioner’s set, indeed, which were just luckily vacant. 
When a College Magnate takes the trouble to be polite, there is 
no man more splendidly courteous. Immersed in their books, 
and excluded from the world by the gravity of their occupations, 
these reverend men assume a solemn magnificence of compli- 
ment in which they rustle and swell as in their grand robes of 
state. Those silks and brocades are not put on for all comers 
or every day. 

When the two gentlemen had taken leave of the tutor in his 
study, and had returned to Mr. Buck’s ante-room, or lecture- 
room, a very handsome apartment, turkey-carpeted, and hung 
with excellent prints and richly framed pictures, they found the 
tutor’s servant already in waiting there, accompanied by a man 
with a bag full of caps and a number of gowns, from which Pen 
might select a cap and gown for himself, and the servant, no 
doubt, would get a commission proportionable to the service 
done by him. Mr. Pen was all in a tremor of pleasure as the 
bustling tailor tried on a gown, and pronounced that it was an 
excellent fit ; and then he put the pretty college cap on, in rather 
a dandified manner, and somewhat on one side, as he had seen 
Fiddicombe, the youngest master at Grey Friars, wear it. And 
he inspected the entire costume with a great deal of satisfaction 
in one of the great gilt mirrors which ornamented Mr. Buck’s 
lecture-room : for some of these college divines are no more 


172 


PENDENN1S. 


above looking-glasses than a lady is, and look to the set of 
their gowns and caps quite as anxiously as folks do of the love- 
lier sex. 

Then Davis, the skip or attendant, led the way, keys in 
hand, across the quadrangle, the Major and Pen following him, 
the latter blushing, and pleased with his new academical habili- 
ments, across the quadrangle to the rooms which were destined 
for the freshman ; and which were vacated by the retreat of the 
gentleman-pensioner, Mr. Spicer. The rooms were very com- 
fortable, with large cross-beams, high wainscots, and small 
windows in deep embrasures. Mr. Spicer’s furniture was there, 
and to be sold at a valuation, and Major Pendennis agreed on 
his nephew’s behalf to take the available part of it, laughingly 
however declining (as, indeed, Pen did for his own part) six 
sporting prints, and four groups of opera- dancers with gauze 
draperies, which formed the late occupant’s pictorial collection. 

Then they went to hall, where Pen sat down and ate his 
commons with his brother freshmen, and the Major took his 
place at the high-table along with the college dignitaries and 
other fathers or guardians of youth, who had come up with their 
sons to Oxbridge ; and after all they went to Mr. Buck’s to take 
wine ; and after wine to chapel, where the Major sat with great 
gravity in the upper place, having a fine view of the Master in 
his carved throne or stall under the organ-loft, where that 
gentleman, the learned Doctor Donne, sat magnificent, with 
his great prayer-book before him, an image of statuesque piety 
and rigid devotion. All the young freshmen behaved with 
gravity and decorum, but Pen was shocked to see that atrocious 
little Foker, who came in very late, and half-a-dozen of his 
comrades in the gentlemen-pensioners’ seats, giggling and talk- 
ing as if they had been in so many stalls at the Opera. 

Pen could hardly sleep at night in his bedroom at the 
Trencher ; so anxious was he to begin his college life, and to 
get into his own apartments. What did he think about, as he 
lay tossing and awake ? Was it about his mother at home ; the 
pious soul whose life was bound up in his? Yes, let us hope 
he thought of her a little. Was it about Miss Fotheringay, and 
his eternal passion, which had kept him awake so many nights, 
and created such wretchedness and such longing? He had a 
trick of blushing, and if you had been in the room, and the 
candle had not been out, you might have seen the youth’s 
countenance redden more than once, as he broke out into 
passionate incoherent exclamations regarding that luckless 
event of his life. His uncle’s lessons had not been thrown 


PEND ENNIS. 


*7 3 


away upon him ; the mist of passion had passed from his eyes 
now, and he saw her as she was. To think that he, Pendennis, 
had been enslaved by such a woman, and then jilted by her ! 
that he should have stooped so low, to be trampled on in the 
mire ! that there was a time in his life, and that but a few 
months back, when he was willing to take Costigan for his 
father-in-law ! — 

“ Poor old Smirke ! ” Pen presently laughed out — “ well, 
I’ll write and try and console the poor old boy. He won’t die 
of his passion, ha, ha ! ” The Major, had he been awake, 
might have heard a score of such ejaculations uttered by Pen 
as he lay awake and restless through the first night of his resi- 
dence at Oxbridge. 

It would, perhaps, have been better for a youth, the battle 
of whose life was going to begin on the morrow, to have passed 
the eve in a different sort of vigil : but the world had got hold 
of Pen in the shape of his selfish old Mentor : and those who 
have any interest in his character, must have perceived ere 
now, that this lad was very weak as well as very impetuous, 
very vain as well as very frank, and if of a generous disposi- 
tion, not a little selfish, in the midst of his profuseness, and 
also rather fickle, as all eager pursuers of self-gratification are. 

The six-months’ passion had aged him very considerably. 
There was an immense gulf between Pen the victim of love, and 
Pen the innocent boy of eighteen, sighing after it : and so 
Arthur Pendennis had all the experience and superiority, be- 
sides that command which afterwards conceit and imperiousness 
of disposition gave him over the young men with whom he now 
began to live. 

He and his uncle passed the morning with great satisfaction 
in making purchases for the better comfort of the apartments 
which the lad was about to occupy. Mr. Spicer’s china and 
glass were in a dreadfully dismantled condition, his lamps 
smashed, and his book-cases by no means so spacious as those 
shelves which would be requisite to receive the contents of the 
boxes which were lying in the hall at Fairoaks, and which were 
addressed to Arthur in the hand of poor Helen. 

The boxes arrived in a few days, that his mother had packed 
with so much care. Pen was touched as he read the super- 
scriptions in the dear well-known hand, and he arranged in 
their proper places all the books, his old friends, and all the 
linen and table-cloths which Helen had selected from the 
family stock, and all the jam-pots which little Laura had bound 
in straw, and the hundred simple gifts of home. 


v. 


*74 


PENDENNIS. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

PENDENNIS OF BONIFACE. 

Our friend Pen was not sorry when his Mentor took leave 
of the young gentleman on the second day after the arrival of 
the pair in Oxbridge, and we may be sure that the Major on 
his part was very glad to have discharged his duty, and to have 
the duty over. More than three months of precious time had 
that martyr of a Major given up to his nephew — Was ever 
selfish man called upon to make a greater sacrifice ? Do you 
know many men or Majors who would do as much ? A man 
will lay down his head, or peril his life for his honor, but let us 
be shy how we ask him to give up his ease or his heart’s desire. 
Very few of us can bear that trial. Let us give the Major due 
credit for his conduct during the past quarter, and own that he 
has quite a right to be pleased at getting a holiday. Foker and 
Pen saw him off in the coach, and the former youth gave par- 
ticular orders to the coachman to take care of that gentleman 
inside. It pleased the elder Pendennis to have his nephew in 
the company of a young fellow who would introduce him to the 
best set of the university. The Major rushed off to London 
and thence to Cheltenham, from which watering-place he de- 
scended upon some neighboring great houses, whereof the 
families were not gone abroad, and where good shooting and 
company were to be had. 

We are not about to go through young Pen’s academical 
career very minutely. Alas, the life of such boys does not bear 
telling altogether. I wish it did. I ask you, does yours ? As 
long as what we call our honor is clear, I suppose your mind 
is pretty easy. Women are pure, but not men. Women are 
unselfish, but not men. And I would not wish to say of poor 
Arthur Pendennis that he was worse than his neighbors, only 
that his neighbors are bad for the most part. Let us have the 
candor to own as much at least. Can you point out ten spot- 
less men of your acquaintance ? Mine is pretty large, but I 
can’t find ten saints in the list. 

During the first term of Mr. Pen’s university life, he 
attended classical and mathematical lectures with tolerable 
assiduity ; but discovering before very long time that he had 
little taste or genius for the pursuing of the exact sciences, and 


PENDENNIS. 


*75 

being perhaps rather annoyed that one or two very vulgar 
young men, who did not even use straps to their trousers so as 
to cover the abominably thick and coarse shoes and stockings 
which they wore, beat him completely in the lecture-room, he 
gave up his attendance at that course, and announced to his 
fond parent that he proposed to devote himself exclusively to 
the cultivation of Greek and Roman Literature. 

Mrs. Pendennis was, for her part, quite satisfied that her 
darling boy should pursue that branch of learning for which he 
had the greatest inclination ; and only besought him not- to 
ruin his health by too much study, for she had heard the most 
melancholy stories of young students who, by over fatigue, had 
brought on brain-fevers and perished untimely in the midst of 
their university career. And Pen’s health, which was always 
delicate, was to be regarded, as she justly said, beyond all con- 
siderations or vain honors. Pen, although not aware of any 
lurking disease which was likely to endanger his life, yet kindly 
promised his mamma not to sit up reading too late of nights, 
and stuck to his word in this respect with a great deal more 
tenacity of resolution than he exhibited upon some other 
occasions, when perhaps he was a little remiss. 

Presently he began too to find that he learned little good 
in the classical lecture. His fellow-students there were too 
dull, as in mathematics they were too learned for him; Mr. 
Buck, the tutor, was no better a scholar than many a fifth-form 
boy at Grey Friars; might have some stupid humdrum notions 
about the metre and grammatical construction of a passage of 
HSschylus or Aristophanes, but had no more notion of the 
poetry than Mrs. Binge, his bed-maker ; and Pen grew weary 
of hearing the dull students and tutor blunder through a few 
lines of a play, which he could read in a tenth part of the time 
which they gave to it. After all, private reading, as he began 
to perceive, was the only study which was really profitable to a 
man ; and he announced to his mamma that he should read to 
himself a great deal more, and in public a great deal less. 
That excellent woman knew no more about Homer than she 
did about Algebra, but she was quite contented with Pen’s ar- 
rangements regarding his course of studies, and felt perfectly 
confident that her dear boy would get the place which he 
merited. 

Pen did not come home until after Christmas, a little to the 
fond mother’s disappointment, and Laura’s, who was longing 
for him to make a fine snow fortification, such as he had made 
three winters before. But he was invited to Logwood, Lady 


PENDENNIS. 


176 

Agnes Foker’s, where there were private theatricals, and a gay 
Christmas party of very fine folks, some of them whom Major 
Pendennis would on no account have his nephew neglect. 
However, he stayed at home for the last th$ee weeks of the 
vacation, and Laura had the opportunity of remarking what a 
quantity of fine new clothes he brought with him, and his 
mother admired his improved appearance and manly and de- 
cided tone. 

He did not come home at Easter ; but when he arrived for 
the long vacation, he brought more smart clothes ; appearing in 
the morning in wonderful shooting-jackets, with remarkable 
buttons ; and in the evening in gorgeous velvet waistcoats, with 
richly-embroidered cravats, and curious linen. And as she 
pried about his room, she saw, oh, such a beautiful dressing- 
case, with silver mountings, and a quantity of lovely rings and 
jewellery. And he had a new French watch and gold chain, in 
place of the big old chronometer, with its bunch of jingling 
seals, which had hung from the fob of John Pendennis, and by 
the second-hand of which the defunct doctor had felt many a 
patient’s pulse in his time. It was but a fewjmonths back Pen 
had longed for this watch, which he thought the most splendid 
and august time-piece in the world ; and just before he went to 
college, Helen had taken it out of her trinket-box (where it had 
remained unwound since the death of her husband) and given 
it to Pen with a solemn and appropriate little speech respecting 
his father’s virtues and the proper use of time. This portly and 
valuable chronometer Pen now pronounced to. be out of date, 
and indeed, made some comparisons between it and a warming- 
pan, which Laura thought disrespectful, and he left the watch 
in a drawer, in the company of soiled primrose gloves, cravats 
which had gone out of favor, and of that other school watch 
which has once before been mentioned in this history. Our old 
friend, Rebecca, Pen pronounced to be no longer up to his 
weight, and swopped her away for another and more powerful 
horse, for which he had to pay rather a heavy figure. Mrs. 
Pendennis gave the boy the money for the new horse ; and 
Laura cried when Rebecca was fetched away. 

Also Pen brought a large box of cigars branded Colorados, 
Afraticesados , Telescopies, Fudson Oxford Street, or by some 
such strange titles, and began to consume these not only about 
the stables and green-houses, where they were very good for 
Helen’s plants, but in his own study, — which practice his mother 
did not at first approve. But he was at work upon a prize 
poem, he said, and could not compose without his cigar, and 


PEND ENNIS. 


I 77 

quoted the late lamented Lord Byron’s lines in favor of the cus- 
tom of smoking. As he was smoking to such good purpose, his 
mother could not of course refuse permission : in fact, the good 
soul coming into the room one day in the midst of Pen’s labors 
(he was consulting a novel which had recently appeared, for the 
cultivation of the light literature of his own country as well as 
of foreign nations became every student) — Helen, we say, com- 
ing into the room and finding Pen on the sofa at this work, 
rather than disturb him went for a light-box and his cigar-case 
to his bedroom which was adjacent, and actually put the cigar into 
his mouth and lighted the match at which he kindled it. Pen 
laughed, and kissed his mother’s hand as it hung fondly over the 
back of the sofa. “ Dear old mother,” he said, “ if I were to 
tell you to burn the house down, I think you would do it.” 
And it is very likely that Mr. Pen was right, and that the foolish 
woman would have done almost as much for him as he said. 

Besides the works of English “ light literature ” which this 
diligent student devoured, he brought down boxes of the light 
literature of the neighboring country of France : into the leaves 
of which when Helen dipped, she read such things as caused’ 
her to open her eyes with wonder. But Pen showed her that 
it was not he who made the books, though it was absolutely 
necessary that he should keep up his French by an acquaint- 
ance with the most celebrated writers of the day, and that it 
was as clearly his duty to read the eminent Paul de Kock, as to 
study Swift or Moliere. And Mrs. Pendennis yielded with a 
sigh of perplexity. But Miss Laura was warned off the books, 
both by his anxious mother, and that rigid moralist Mr. Arthur 
Pendennis himself, who, however he might be called upon to 
study every branch of literature in order to form his mind and 
perfect his style, would by no means prescribe such a course of 
reading to a young lady whose business in life was very dif- 
ferent. 

In the course of this long vacation Mr. Pen drank up the 
bin of claret which his father had laid in, and of which we have 
heard the son remark that there was not a headache in a hogs- 
head ; and this wine being exhausted, he wrote for a further 
supply to “ his wine merchants,” Messrs. Binney and Latham 
of Mark Lane, London : from whom, indeed, old Doctor Port- 
man had recommended Pen to get a supply of port and sherry 
on going to college. “ You will have, no doubt, to entertain 
your young friends at Boniface with wine-parties,” the honest 
rector had remarked to the lad. “ They used to be customary 
at college in my time, and I would advise you to employ an 

12 


PENDENNIS . 


178 

honest and respectable house in London for your small stock 
of wine, rather than to have recourse to the Oxbridge trades- 
men, whose liquor, if I remember rightly, was both deleterious 
in quality and exorbitant in price.” And the obedient young 
gentleman took the Doctor’s advice, and patronized Messrs. 
Binney and Latham at the rector’s suggestion. 

So when he wrote orders for a stock of wine to be sent 
down to the cellars at Fairoaks, he hinted that Messrs. B. and 
L. might send in his university account for wine at the same 
time with the Fairoaks bill. The poor widow was frightened 
at the amount. But Pen laughed at her old-fashioned views, 
said that the bill was moderate, that everybody drank claret 
and champagne now, and, finally, the widow paid, feeling dimly 
that the expenses of her household were increasing considera- 
bly, and that her narrow income would scarce suffice to meet 
them. But they were only occasional. Pen merely came home 
for a few weeks at the vacation. Laura and she might pinch 
when he was gone. In the brief time he was with them ought 
they not to make him happy ? 

Arthur’s own allowances were liberal all this time ; indeed, 
much more so than those of the sons of far more wealthy men. 
Years before, the thrifty and affectionate John Pendennis, 
whose darling project it had ever been to give his son a univer- 
sity education, and those advantages of which his own father’s 
extravagance had deprived him, had begun laying by a store of 
money which he called Arthur’s Education Fund. Year after 
year in his book his executors found entries of sums vested as 
A. E. F., and during the period subsequent to her husband’s 
decease, and before Pen’s entry at college, the widow had 
added sundry sums to this fund, so that when Arthur went up 
to Oxbridge it reached no inconsiderable amount. Let him be 
liberally allowanced, was Major Pendennis’s maxim. Let him 
make his first entree into the world as a gentleman, and take his 
place with men of good rank and station ; after giving it to 
him, it will be his own duty to hold it. There is no such bad 
policy as stinting a boy — or putting him on a lower allowance 
than his fellows. Arthur will have to face the world and fight 
for himself presently. Meanwhile we shall have procured for 
him good friends, gentlemanly habits, and have him well backed 
and well trained against the time when the real struggle comes. 
And these liberal opinions the Major probably advanced both 
because they were just, and because he was not dealing with 
his own money. 

Thus young Pen, the only son of an estated country gentle- 


PENDENNIS . 


179 


man, with a good allowance, and a gentlemanlike bearing and 
person, looked to be a lad of much more consequence than he 
was really ; and was held by the Oxbridge authorities, trades^ 
men, and undergraduates, as quite a young buck and member 
of the aristocracy. His manner was frank, brave, and perhaps 
a little impertinent, as becomes a high-spirited youth. He was 
perfectly generous and freehanded with his money, which 
seemed pretty plentiful. He loved joviality, and had a good 
voice for a song. Boat-racing had not risen in Pen’s time to 
the fureur which, as we are given to understand, it has since 
attained in the university ; and riding aad tandem-driving were 
the fashions of the ingenuous youth. Pen rode well to hounds, 
appeared in pink, as became a young buck, and not particularly 
extravagant in equestrian or any other amusement, yet managed 
to run up a fine bill at Nile’s, the livery stable-keeper, and in a 
number of other quarters. In fact, this lucky young gentleman 
had almost every taste to a considerable degree. He was very 
fond of books of all sorts : Doctor Portman had taught him to 
like rare editions, and his own taste led him to like beautiful 
bindings. It was marvellous what tall copies, and gilding, and 
marbling, and blind-tooling, the booksellers and binders put 
upon Pen’s book-shelves. He had a very fair taste in matters 
of art, and a keen relish for prints of a high school — none of 
your French Opera Dancers, or tawdry Racing Prints, such as 
had delighted the simple eyes of Mr. Spicer, his predecessor 
— but your Stranges, and Rembrandt etchings, and Wilkies 
before the letter, with which his appartments were furnished 
presently in the most perfect good taste, as was allowed in the 
university, were this young fellow got no small reputation. We 
have mentioned that he exhibited a certain partiality for rings, 
jewellery, and fine raiment of all sorts ; and it must be owned 
that Mr. Pen, during his time at the university, was rather a 
dressy man, and loved to array himself in splendor. He and 
his polite friends would dress themselves out with as much care 
in order to go and dine at each other’s rooms, as other folks 
w r ould who were going to enslave a mistress. They said he 
used to wear rings over his kid gloves, which he always denies ; 
but what follies will not youth perpetrate with its own admirable 
gravity and simplicity ? That he took perfumed baths is a 
truth ; and he used to say that he took them after meeting cer- 
tain men of a very low set in hall. 

In Pen’s second year, when Miss Fotheringay made her 
chief hit in London, and scores of prints were published of her, 
Pen had one of these hung in his bedroom, and confided to 


r8o 


PENDENNIS. 


the men of his set, how awfully, how wildly, how madly, how 
passionately, he had loved that woman. He showed them in 
confidence the verses that he had written to her, and his brow 
would darken, his eyes roll, his chest heave with emotion as 
he recalled that fatal period of his life, and described the woes 
and agonies which he had suffered. The verses were copied 
out, handed about, sneered at, admired, passed from coterie to 
coterie. There are few things which elevate a lad in the esti- 
mation of his brother boys more than to have a character for 
a great and romantic passion. Perhaps there is something 
noble in it at all times^-among very young men, it is considered 
heroic — Pen was pronounced a tremendous fellow. They said 
he had almost conunited suicide : that he had fought a duel 
with a baronet about her. Freshmen pointed him out to each 
other. As at the promenade time at two o’clock he swaggered 
out of college, surrounded by his cronies, he was famous to be- 
hold. He was elaborately attired. He would ogle the ladies 
who came to lionize the University, and passed before him on 
the arms of happy gownsmen, and give his opinion upon their 
personal charms, or their toilettes, with the gravity of a critic 
whose experience entitled him to speak with authority. Men 
used to say that they had been walking with Pendennis, and 
were as pleased to be seen in his company as some of us would 
be if we walked with a duke down Pall Mall. He and the 
Proctor capped each other as they met, as if they were rival 
powers, and the men hardly knew which was the greater. 

In fact, in the course of his second year, Arthur Pendennis 
had become one of the men of fashion in the university. It is 
curious to watch that facile admiration, and simple fidelity of 
youth. They hang round a leader : and wonder at him, and 
love him, and imitate him. No generous boy ever lived, I sup- 
pose, that has not had some wonderment of admiration for 
another boy ; and Monsieur Pen at Oxbridge had his school, 
his faithful band of friends, and his rivals. When the young 
men heard at the haberdashers’ shops that Mr. Pendennis, of 
Boniface, had just ordered a crimson satin cravat, you would 
see a couple of dozen crimson satin cravats in Main Street in 
the course of the week — and Simon, the Jeweller, was known 
to sell no less than two gross of Pendennis’ pins, from a pat- 
tern which the young gentleman had selected in his shop. 

Now if any person with arithmetical turn of mind will take 
the trouble to calculate what a sum of money it would cost a 
young man to indulge freely in all the above propensities which 
we have said Mr. Pen possessed, it will be seen that a young 


PENDENNIS. 


1S1 

fellow, with such liberal tastes and amusements, must needs in 
the course of two or three years spend or owe a very handsome 
sum of money. We have said our friend Pen had not a calculating 
turn. No one propensity of his was outrageously extravagant: 
and it is certain that Paddington’s tailor’s account ; Guttlebury’s 
cook’s bill for dinners ; Dilley Tandy’s bill with Finn, the print- 
seller, for Raphael-Morghens, and Landseer proofs, and Wor- 
mall’s dealings with Parkton, the great bookseller, for Aldine 
editions, black-letter folios, and richly illuminated Missals of 
the XVI. Century ; and Snaffle’s or Foker’s score with Nile 
the horse-dealer, were, each and all of them, incomparably 
greater that any little bills which Mr. Pen might run up with 
the above-mentioned tradesman. But Pendennis of Boniface 
had the advantage over all these young gentlemen, his friends 
and associates, of a universality of taste : and whereas young 
Lord Paddington did not care twopence for the most beautiful 
print, or to look into any gilt frame that had not a mirror 
within it ; and Guttlebury did not mind in the least how he 
was dressed, and had an aversion for horse exercise, nay a 
terror of it ; and Snuffle never read any printed works but the 
“ Racing Calender,” or “ Bell’s Life,” or cared for any manu- 
script except his greasy little scrawl of a betting-book : — our 
catholic-minded young friend occupied himself in every one of 
the branches of science or pleasure above-mentioned, and dis- 
tinguished himself tolerably in each. 

Hence young Pen got a prodigious reputation in the uni- 
versity, and was haled as a sort of Crichton ; and as for the 
English verse prize, in competition for which we have seen him 
busily engaged at Fairoaks, Jones of Jesus carried it that year 
certainly, but the undergraduates thought Pen’s a much finer 
poem, and he had his verses printed at his own expense, and 
distributed in gilt morocco covers amongst his acquaintance. 
I found a copy of it lately in a dusty corner of Mr. Pen’s bookr 
cases, and have it before me this minute, bound up in a collection 
of old Oxbridge tracts, university statutes, prize poems by suc- 
cessful and unsuccessful candidates, declamations recited in the 
college chapel, speeches delivered at the Union Debating Society, 
and inscribed by Arthur with his name and college, Pendennis 
— Boniface ; or presented to him by his affectionate friend 
Thompson or Jackson, the author. How strange the epigraphs 
look in those half-boyish hands, and what a thrill the sight of 
the documents gives one after the lapse of a few lustres ! How 
fate, since that time, has removed some, estranged others, dealt 
awfully with all. Many a hand is cold that wrote those kindly 


182 


PENDENNIS. 


memorials, and that we pressed in the confident and generous 
grasp of youthful friendship. What passions our friendship’s 
were in those old days, how artless and void of doubt ! How 
the arm you were never tired of having linked in yours under 
the fair college avenues or by the river side, where it washes 
Magdalen Gardens, or Christ Church Meadows, or winds by 
Trinity and King’s, was withdrawn of necessity, when you en- 
tered presently the world, and each parted to push a struggle 
for himself through the great mob on the way through life ! 
Are we the same men now that wrote those inscriptions — that 
read those poems ? that delivered or heard those essays and 
speeches so simple, so pompous, so ludicrously solemn ; paro- 
died so artlessly from books, and spoken with smug chubby 
faces, and such an admirable aping of wisdom and gravity ? 
Here is the book before me : it is scarcely fifteen years old. 
Here is Jack moaning with despair and Byronic misanthropy, 
whose career at the university was one of unmixed milk-punch. 
Here is Tom’s daring Essay in defence of suicide and of re- 
publicanism in general, apropos of the death of Roland and the 
Girondins — Tom’s, who wears the starchest tie in all the di- 
ocese, and would go to Smithfield rather than eat a beefsteak 

on Friday in Lent. Here is Bob, of the Circuit, who has 

made a fortune in Railroad Committees, — bellowing out with 
Tancred and Godfrey, “ On to the breach, ye soldiers of the 
cross, Scale the red wall and swim the choking foss. Ye 
dauntless archers, twang your cross-bows well ; On, bill and 
battle-axe and mangonel ! Ply battering-ram and hurtling 
catapult, Jerusalem is ours — id Deus vult .” After which 
comes a mellifluous description of the gardens of Sharon and 
the maids of Salem, and a prophecy that roses shall deck the 
entire country of Syria, and a speedy reign of peace be estab- 
lished — all in undeniable decasyllabic lines and the queerest 
aping of sense and sentiment and poetry. And there are Es- 
says and Poems along with these grave parodies, and boyish 
exercises (which are at once frank and false, and so mirthful, 
yet, somehow, so mournful), by youthful hands, that shall never 
write more. Fate has interposed darkly, and the young voices 
are silent, and the eager brains have ceased to work. This 
one had genius and a great descent, and seemed to be destined 
for honors which now are of little worth to him : that had 
virtue, learning, genius — every faculty and endowment which 
might secure love, admiration, and worldly fame : an obscure 
and solitary churchyard contains the grave of many fond 
hopes, and the pathetic stone which bids them farewell. I saw 


PENDENNIS. 


183 

the sun shining on it in the fall of last year, and heard the 
sweet village choir raising anthems round about. What boots 
whether it be Westminster or a little country spire which 
covers your ashes, or if, a few days sooner or later, the world 
forgets you. 

Amidst these friends then, and a host more, Pen passed 
more than two brillant and happy years of his life. He had 
his fill of pleasure and popularity. No dinner or supper-party 
was complete without him ; and Pen’s jovial wit, and Pen’s 
songs, and dashing courage, and frank and manly bearing, 
charmed all the undergraduates. Though he became the 
favorite and leader of young men who were much his superiors 
in wealth and station, he was much too generous to endeavor 
to propitiate them by any meanness or cringing on his own part 
and would not neglect the humblest man of his acquaintance in 
order to curry favor with the richest young grandee in the 
university. His name is still remembered at the Union 
Debating Club, as one of the brilliant orators of his day. By 
the way, from having been an ardent Tory in his freshman’s 
year, his principles took a sudden turn afterwards, and he 
became a liberal of the most violent order. He avowed himself 
a Dantonist, and asserted that Louis the Sixteenth was served 
right. And as for Charles the First, he vowed that he would 
chop off that monarch’s head with his own right hand were he 
then in the room at the Union Debating Club, and had Crom- 
well no other executioner for the traitor. He and Lord Magnus 
Charters, the Marquis of Runnymede’s son, before-mentioned, 
were the most truculent republicans of their day. 

There are reputations of this sort made quite independent 
of the collegiate hierarchy, in the republic of gownsmen. A 
man may be famous in the Honor-lists and entirely unknown to 
the undergraduates : who elect kings and chieftains of their 
own, whom they admire and obey, as negro-gangs have private 
black sovereigns in their own body, to whom they pay an occult 
obedience, besides that which they publicly profess for their 
owners and drivers. Among the young ones Pen became 
famous and popular : not that he did much, but there was a 
general determination that he could do a great deal if he 
chose. “ Ah, if Pendennis of Boniface would but try,” the men 
said, “ he might do anything.” He was backed for the Greek 
Ode won by Smith of Trinity ; everybody was sure he would 
have the Latin hexameter prize which Brown of St. John’s, 
however, carried off, and in this way one university honor after 
another was lost by him, until, after two or three failures, Mr. 


PENDENNIS. 


184 

Pen ceased to compete. But he got a declamation prize in his 
own college, and brought home to his mother and Laura at 
Fairoaks a set of prize-books begilt with the college arms, and 
so big, well-bound, and magnificent, that these ladies thought 
there had been no such prize ever given in a college before as 
this of Pen’s, and that he had won the very largest honor which 
Oxbridge was capable of awarding. 

As vacation after vacation and term after term passed away 
without the desired news that Pen had sat for any scholarship 
or won any honor, Doctor Portman grew mightily gloomy in 
his behavior toward Arthur, and adopted a sulky grandeur of 
deportment towards him, which the lad returned by a similar 
haughtiness. One vacation he did not call upon the Doctor at 
all, much to his mother’s annoyance, who thought that it was a 
privilege to enter the Rectory-house at Clavering, and listened 
to Dr. Portman’s antique jokes and s’tories, though ever so often 
repeated, with unfailing veneration. “ I cannot stand the 
Doctor’s patronizing air,” Pen said. “ He’s too kind to me, a 
great deal too fatherly. I have seen in the world better men 
than him, and I am not going to bore myself by listening to his 
dull old stories.” The tacit feud between Pen and the Doctor 
made the widow nervous, so that she too avoided Portman, and 
was afraid to go to the Rectory when Arthur was at home. 

One Sunday in the last long vacation, the wretched boy 
pushed his rebellious spirit so far as not to go to church, and 
he was seen at the gate of the Clavering Arms smoking a cigar 
in the face of the congregation as it issued from St. Mary’s. 
There was an awful sensation in the village society, Portman 
prophesied Pen’s ruin after that, and groaned in spirit over the 
rebellious young prodigal. 

So did Helen tremble in her heart, and little Laura — Laura 
had grown to be a fine young stripling by this time, graceful 
and fair, clinging round Helen and worshipping her, with a 
passionate affection. Both of these women felt that their boy 
was changed. He was no longer the artless Pen of old days, 
so brave, so artless, so impetuous, and tender. His face looked 
careworn and haggard, his voice had a deeper sound, and tones 
more sarcastic. Care seemed to be pursuing him ; but he only 
laughed when his mother questioned him, and parried her 
anxious queries with some scornful jest. Nor did he spend 
much of his vacations at home ; he went on visits to one great 
friend or another, and scared the quiet pair at Fairoaks by 
stories of great houses whither he had been invited, and by 
talking of lords without their titles. 


PENDENNIS. 


185 

Honest Harry Foker, who had been the means of introduc- 
ing Arthur Pendennis to that set of young men at the university 
from whose society and connections Arthur’s uncle expected 
that the lad would get so much benefit ; who had called for 
Arthur’s first song at his first supper-party; and who had pre- 
sented him at the Barmecide Club, where none but the very 
best men of Oxbridge were admitted (it consisted in Pen’s time 
of six noblemen, eight gentlemen pensioners, and twelve of the 
most select commoners of the university), soon found himself 
left far behind by the young freshman in the fashionable world 
of Oxbridge, and being a generous and worthy fellow, without 
a spark of envy in his composition, was exceedingly pleased at 
the success of his young protege, and admired Pen quite as 
much as any of the other youth did. It was he who followed 
Pen now, and quoted his sayings ; learned his songs, and re- 
tailed them at minor supper-parties, and was never weary of 
hearing them from the gifted young poet’s own mouth — for a 
good deal of the time which Mr. Pen might have employed much 
more advantageously in the pursuit of the regular scholastic 
studies, was given up to the composition of secular ballads, 
which he sang about at parties according to university wont. 

It had been as well for Arthur if the honest Foker had re- 
mained for some time at college, for, with all his vivacity, he 
was a prudent young man, and often curbed Pen’s propensity 
to extravagance : but Foker’s collegiate career did not last very 
long after Arthur's entrance at Boniface. Repeated differences 
with the university authorities caused Mr. Foker to quit Ox- 
bridge in an untimely manner. He would persist in attending 
races on the neighboring Hungerford Heath, in spite of the in- 
junctions of his academic superiors. He never could be got to 
frequent the chapel of the college with that regularity of piety 
which Alma Mater demands from her children ; tandems, 
which are abominations in the eyes of the heads and tutors, 
were Foker’s greatest delight, and so reckless was his driving 
and frequent the accidents and upsets out of his drag, that Pen 
called taking a drive with him taking the “ Diversions of Purley 
finally, having a dinner-party at his rooms to entertain some 
friends from London, nothing would satisfy Mr. Foker but 
painting Mr. Buck’s door vermilion, in which freak he was 
caught by the proctor ; and although young Black Strap, the 
celebrated negro fighter, who was one of Mr. Foker’s distin- 
guished guests, and was holding the can of paint while the 
young artist operated on the door, knocked down two of the 
proctor’s attendants and performed prodigies of valor, yet these 


i86 


PEND ENNIS. 


feats rather injured than served Foker, whom the proctor knew 
very well and who was taken with the brush in his hand, sum- 
marily convened and sent down from the university. 

The tutor wrote a very kind and feeling letter to Lady Agnes 
on the subject, stating that everybody was fond of the youth ; 
that he never meant harm to any mortal creature ; that he for 
his own part would have been delighted to pardon the harmless 
little boyish frolic, had not its unhappy publicity rendered it im- 
possible to look the freak over, and breathing the most fervent 
wishes for the young fellow’s welfare — wishes no doubt sincere, 
for Foker, as we know, came of a noble family on his mother’s 
side, and on the other was heir to a great number of thousand 
pounds a year. 

“ It don’t matter,” said Foker, talking over the matter with 
Pen — “ a little sooner or a little later, what is the odds ? I 
should have been plucked for my little go again, I know I 
should — that Latin I cannot screw into my head, and my 
mamma’s anguish would have broke out next term. The Gov- 
ernor will blow like an old grampus, I know he will, — well, we 
must stop till he gets his wind again. I shall probably go 
abroad and improve my mind with foreign travel. Yes, parly 
voo's the ticket. It’ly, and that sort of thing. I’ll go to Paris 
and learn to dance and complete my education. But it’s not 
me I’m anxious about, Pen. As long as people drink beer I 
don’t care, — it’s about you I’m doubtful, my boy. You’re going 
too fast, and can’t keep up the pace, I tell you. It’s not the 
fifty you owe me, — pay it or not when you like, — but it’s the 
every-day pace, and I tell you it will kill you. You’re livin’ as 
if there was no end to the money in the stockin’ at home. You 
oughtn’t to give dinners, you ought to eat ’em. Fellows are 
glad to have you. You oughtn’t to owe horse bills, you ought 
to ride other chaps’ nags. You know no more about betting 
than I do about algebra : the chaps will win your money as 
sure as you sport it. Hang me if you are not trying at every- 
thing. I saw you sit down to ecarte last week at Trumpington’s, 
and taking your turn with the bones after Ringwood’s supper. 
They’ll beat you at ‘it, Pen, my boy, even if they play on the 
square, which I don’t say they don’t, nor which I don’t say they 
do, mind. But /won’t play with ’em. You’re no match for 
’em. You ain’t up to their weight It’s like little Black Strap 
standing up to Tom Spring, — the Black’s a pretty fighter, but, 
Law bless you, his arm ain’t long enough to touch Tom, — and 
I tell you, you’re going it with fellers beyond your weight. 
Look here — If you’ll promise me never to bet nor touch a box 
nor a card, I’ll let you off the two ponies.” 


PENDENNIS. , jgy 

But Pen, laughingly, said, “ that though it wasn't convenient 
to him to pay the two ponies at that moment, he by no means 
wished to be let off any just debts he owed;” and he and 
Foker parted, not without many dark forebodings on the latter's 
part with regard to his friend, who Harry thought was travel- 
ling speedily on the road to ruin. 

“ One must do at Rome as Rome does,” Pen said, in a 
dandified manner, jingling some sovereigns in his waistcoat 
pocket. “ A little quiet play at ecarte can’t hurt a man who 
plays very well — I came away fourteen sovereigns richer from 
Ringwood's supper, and, gad ! I wanted the money.” — And he 
walked off, after having taken leave of poor Foker, who went 
away without any beat of drum, or offer to drive the coach out 
of Oxbridge, to superintend a little dinner which he was going 
to give at his own rooms in Boniface, about which dinners, the 
cook of the college, who had a great respect for Mr. Pendennis, 
always took especial pains for his young favorite. 


CHAPTER XIX. 
rake’s progress. 

So in Pen’s second year Major Pendennis paid a brief visit 
to his nephew, and was introduced to several of Pen’s university 
friends — the gentle and polite Lord Plinlimmon, the gallant 
and open-hearted Magnus Charters, the sly and witty Harland ; 
the intrepid Ringwood, who was called Rupert in the Union 
Debating Club, from his opinions and the bravery of his 
blunders ; Broadbent, styled Barebones Broadbent from the 
republican nature of his opinions (he was of a dissenting family 
from Bristol, and a perfect Boanerges of debate) ; and Bloun- 
dell-Bloundell, whom Mr. Pen entertained at a dinner whereof 
his uncle was the chief guest. 

The Major said, “ Pen, my boy, your dinner went off cl tner- 
veille ; you did the honors very nicely — you carved well — I am 
glad you learned to carve — it is done on the sideboard now in 
most good houses, but is still an important point, and may aid 
you in middle-life — young Lord Plinlimmon is a very amiable 
young man, quite the image of his dear mother (whom I knew 
as Lady Aquila Brownbill) ; and Lord Magnus’s republicanism 
will wear off — it sits prettily enough on a young patrician in 


i88 


PENDENNIS. 


early life, though nothing is so loathsome among persons of our 
rank — Mr. Broadbent seems to have much eloquence and con- 
siderable reading; your friend Foker is always delightful; but 
your acquaintance, Mr. Bloundell, struck me as in all respects 
a most ineligible young man.” 

“ Bless my soul, sir, Bloundel-l-Bloundell ! ” cried Pen, laugh- 
ing : “ why, sir, he’s the most popular man of the university. 

He was in the Dragoons before he came up. We elected 

him of the Barmecides the first week he came up — had a spe- 
cial meeting on purpose — he’s of an excellent family — Suffolk 
Bloundells, descended from Richard’s Blondel, bear a harp in 
chief — and motto O Mong Roy.” 

“ A man may have a very good coat-of-arms, and be a tiger, 
my boy,” the Major said, chipping his egg ; “ that man is a 
tiger, mark my work — a low man. I will lay a wager that he 
left his regiment, which was a good one (for a more respectable 
man than my friend, Lord Martingale, never sat in a saddle), 
in bad odor. There is the unmistakable look of slang and 
bad habits about this Mr. Bloundell. He frequents low gam- 
bling-houses and billiard hells, sir — he haunts third-rate clubs 
— I know he does. I know by his style. I never was mistaken 
in my man yet. Did you remark the quantity of rings and 
jewelry he wore ? That person has Scamp written on his coun- 
tenance, if any man ever had. Mark my words and avoid him. 
Let us turn the conversation. The dinner was a leetle too fine, 
but I don’t object to your making a few extra frais when you 
receive friends. Of course you don’t do it often, and only those 
whom it is your interest to feter. The cutlets were excellent, 
and the souffle uncommonly light and good. The third bottle 
of champagne was not necessary ; but you have a good income, 
and as long as you keep within it, I shall not quarrel with you, 
my dear boy.” 

Poor Pen ! the worthy uncle little knew how often those 
dinners took place, while the reckless young Amphitryon 
delighted to show his hospitality and skill in gourmandize. 
There is no art about which boys are more anxious to have 
an air of knowingness. A taste and knowledge of wines and 
cookery appears to them to be the sign of an accomplished roue 
and manly gentleman. Pen, in his character of Admirable 
Crichton, thought it .necessary to be a great judge and prac- 
titioner of dinners ; we have just said how the college cook 
respected him, and shall soon have to deplore that that worthy 
man so blindly trusted our Pen. In the third year of the lad’s 
residence at Oxbridge, his staircase was by no means encum- 


PENDENNIS. 


189 

bered with dish-covers and desserts, and waiters carrying in 
dishes, and skips opening iced champagne ; crowds of different 
sorts of attendants, with faces sulky or piteous, hung about the 
outer oak, and assailed the unfortunate lad as he issued out of 
his den. 

Nor did his guardian’s advice take any effect, or induce Mr. 
Pen to avoid the society of the disreputable Mr- Bloundell. 

The young magnates of the neighboring great College of 
St. George’s, who regarded Pen, and in whose society he lived, 
were not taken in by Bloundell's flashy graces, and rakish airs 
of fashion. Broadbent called him Captain Macheath, and said 
he would live to be hanged. Foker, during his brief stay at the 
university with Macheath, with characteristic caution, declined 
to say anything in the Captain’s disfavor, but hinted to Pen 
that he had better have him for a partner at whist than play 
against him, and better back him at ecarte than bet on the other 
side. “You see, he plays better than you do, Pen,” was the 
astute young gentleman s remark : “ he plays uncommon well, 
the Captain does ; — and Pen, I wouldn’t take the odds too 
freely from him, if I was you. I don’t think he’s too flush of 
money, the Captain ain’t.” But beyond these dark suggestions 
and generalities, the cautious Foker could not be got to speak. 

Not that his advice would have had more weight with a 
headstrong young man, than advice commonly has with a lad 
who is determined on pursuing his own way. Pen’s appetite 
for pleasure was insatiable, and he rushed at it wherever it pre- 
sented itsek, with an eagerness which bespoke his fiery con- 
stitution and youthful health. He called taking pleasure 
“ seeing life,” and quoted well-known maxims from Terence, 
from Horace, from Shakspeare, to show that one should do all 
that might become a man. He bade fair to be utterly used up 
and a roue , in a few years, if he were to continue at the pace at 
which he was going. 

One night after a supper-party in college, at which Pen and 
Macheath had been present, and at which a little quiet vingt-et- 
un had been played, as the men had taken their caps and were 
going away, after no great losses or winnings on any side, Mr. 
Bloundell playfully took up a green wineglass from the supper- 
table, which had been destined to contain iced cup, but intc 
which he inserted something still more pernicious, namely a 
pair of dice, which the gentleman took out of his waistcoat 
pocket, and put into the glass. Then giving the glass a graceful 
wave which showed that his hand was quite experienced in the 
throwing of dice, he called seven’s the main, and whisking the 


PENDENNIS. 


190 

ivory cubes gently on the table swept them up lightly again 
from the cloth, and repeated this process two or threo times. 
The other men looked on, Pen, of course, among the number, 
who had never used the dice as yet, except to play a humdrum 
game of backgammon at home. 

Mr. Bloundell, who had a good voice, began to troll out the 
chorus from Robert the Devi , an Opera then in great vogue, in 
which chorus many of the men ioined, especially Pen, who was 
in very high spirits, having won a good number of shillings and 
hall-crowns at the vingt-et-un — and presently, instead of going 
home, most of the party were seated round the table playing at 
dice, the green glass going round from hand to hand until Pen 
finally shivered it, after throwing six mains. 

From that night Pen plunged into the delights of the game 
of hazard, as eagerly as it was his custom to pursue any new 
pleasure. Dice can be played of mornings as well as after 
dinner or supper. Bloundell would come into Pen’s rooms 
after breakfast, and it was astonishing how quick the time 
passed as the bones were rattling. They had little quiet parties 
with closed doors, and Bloundell devised a box lined with felt, 
so that the dice should make no noise, and their tell-tale rattle 
not bring the sharp-eared tutors up to the rooms. Bloundell, 
Ringwood, and Pen were once very nearly caught by Mr. Buck, 
who, passing in the Quadrangle, thought he heard the words 
“Two to one on the caster,” through Pen’s open window ; but 
when the tutor got into Arthur’s rooms he found the lads with 
three Homers before them, and Pen said, he was trying to 
coach the two other men, and asked Mr. Buck with great grav- 
ity what was the present condition of the River Scamander, and 
whether it was navigable or no ? 

Mr. Arthur Pendennis did not win much money in these 
transactions with Mr. Bloundell, or indeed gain good of any 
kind except a knowledge of the odds at hazard, which he might 
have learned out of books. 

One eastor vacation, when Pen had announced to his 
mother and uncle his intention not to go down, but stay at Ox- 
bridge r.nd read, Mr. Pen was nevertheless induced to take a 
brief visit to London in company with his friend Mr. Bloundell. 
They put up at a hotel in Covent Garden, where Bloundell had 
a tick, as he called it, and took the pleasures of the town very 
freely after the wont of young university men. Bloundell still 
belonged to a military club, whither he took Pen to dine once 
or twice (the young men would drive thither in a cab, trembling 
lest they should meet Major Pendennis on his beat in Pall Mall), 


PENDENNIS . 


191 

and here Pen was introduced to a number ot gallant young 
fellows with spurs and mustaches, with whom he drank pale- 
ale of mornings and beat the town of a night. Here he saw a 
deal of life, indeed : nor in his career about the theatres and 
singing-houses which these roaring young blades frequented, 
was he very likely to meet his guardian. One night, neverthe- 
less they were very near to each other : a plank only separated 
Pen, who was in the boxes of the Museum Theatre, from the 
Major, who was in Lord Steyne’s box, along with that venera- 
ted nobleman. The Fotheringay was in the pride of her glory. 
She had made a hit : that is, she had drawn very good houses 
for nearly a year, had starred the provinces with great eclat, had 
come back to shine in London with somewhat diminished lustre, 
and now was acting with “ever increasing attraction, &c.,” 
“ triumph of the good old British drama,” as the playbills 
avowed, to houses in which there was plenty of room for any- 
body who wanted to see her. 

It was not the first time Pen had seen her, since that memo- 
rable day when the two had parted in Chatteris. In the pre- 
vious year, when the town was making much of her, and the 
press lauded her beauty, Pen had found a pretext for coming to 
London in term-time, and had rushed off to the theatre to see 
his old flame. He recollected it rather than renewed it. He 
remembered how ardently he used to be on the look out at 
Chatteris, when the speech before Ophelia's or Miss Haller's 
entrance on the stage was made by the proper actor. Now, as 
the actor spoke, he had a sort of teeblc thrill : as the house 
began to thunder with applause, ana Ophelia entered with her 
old bow and sweeping curtsey, Pen felt a slight shock and 
blushed very much as he looked at her and could not help 
thinking that all the house was regarding him. He hardly 
heard her for the first part of the play • and he thought with 
such rage of the humiliation to which she haa subjected him, 
that he began to fancy he was jealous and in love with her sail. 
But that illusion did not last very long. He ran round to the 
stage door of the theatre to see her if possible, but ne d*a not 
succeed. She passed indeea under his nose witn a female 
companion, out ne did not know her, — nor did she recognize 
him. The next night he came in late, and stayed very quietly 
for the afterpiece, and on the third and last night of his stay in 
London — why Taglioni was going to dance at the Opera, — 
Taglioni i and there was to be Don Giovanni, which he admired 
of all things in the world : so Mr. Pen went to Don Giovanni 
and Taglioni. 


192 


PENDENNIS. 


This time the illusion about her was quite gone. She was 
not less handsome, but she was not the same, somehow. The 
light was gone out of her eyes which used to flash there, or 
Pen’s no longer were dazzled by it. The rich voice spoke as 
of old, yet it did not make Pen’s bosom thrill as formerly. He 
thought he could recognize the brogue underneath : the accents 
seemed to him coarse and false. It annoyed him to hear the 
same emphasis on the same words, only uttered a little louder ; 
worse than this, it annoyed him to think that he should ever 
have mistaken that loud imitation for genius, or melted at those 
mechanical sobs or sighs. He felt that it was in another life 
almost, that it was another man who had so madly loved her. 
He was ashamed and bitterly humiliated, and very lonely. Ah, 
poor Pen ! the delusion is better than the truth sometimes, and 
fine dreams than dismal waking. 

They went and had an uproarious supper that night, and 
Mr. Pen had a fine headache the next morning, with which he 
went back to Oxbridge, having spent all his ready money. 

As all this narrative is taken from Pen’s own confessions, so 
that the reader may be assured of the truth of every word of it, 
and as Pen himself never had any accurate notion of the manner 
in which he spent his money, and plunged himself in much 
deeper pecuniary difficulties, during his luckless residence at 
Oxbridge University, it is, of course, impossible for me to give 
any accurate account of his involvements, beyond that general 
notion of his way of life, which we have sketched a few pages 
back. He does not speak too hardly of the roguery of the uni- 
versity tradesmen, or those in London whom he honored with 
his patronage at the outset of his career. Even Finch, the 
money-lender, to whom Bloundell introduced him, and with 
whom he had various transactions, in which the young rascal’s 
signature appeared upon stamped paper, treated him, according 
to Pen’s own account with forbearance, and never mulcted him 
of more than a hundred per cent. The old college cook, his fer- 
vent admirer, made him a private bill, offered to send him in 
dinners up to the very last, and never would have pressed his 
account to his dying day. There was that kindness and frank- 
ness about Arthur Pendennis, which won most people who 
came in contact with him, and which, if it rendered him an easy 
prey to rogues, got him, perhaps, more good-will than he merited 
from many honest men. It was impossible to resist his good 
nature, or, in his worst moments not hope for his rescue from 
utter ruin. 

At the time of his full career of university pleasure, he 


PENDENNIS. 


93 


would leave the gayest party to go and sit with a sick friend. 
He never knew the difference between small and great in the 
treatment of his acquaintances, however much the unlucky lad’s 
tastes, which were of the sumptuous order, led him to prefer 
good society ; he was only too ready to share his guinea with a 
poor friend, and when he got money had an irresistible propen- 
sity for paying, which he never could conquer through life. 

In his third year at college, the duns began to gather awfully 
round about him, and there was a levee at his oak which scan- 
dalized the tutors, and would have scared many a stouter heart. 
With some of these he used to battle, some he would bully 
(under Mr. BloundelPs directions, who was a master in this art, 
though he took a degree in no other), and some deprecate. Ancl 
it is reported of him that little Mary Fordsham, the daughter of 
a certain poor gilder and frame-maker, whom Mr. Pen had 
thought fit to employ, and who had made a number of beautiful 
frames for his fine prints, coming to Pendennis with a piteous 
tale that her father was ill with ague, and that there was an ex- 
ecution in their house, Pen in an anguish of remorse rushed 
away, pawned his grand watch and every single article of jew- 
elry except two old gold sleeve-buttons, which had belonged to 
his father, and rushed with the proceeds to Fordsham’s shop, 
where, with tears in his eyes, and the deepest repentance and 
humility, he asked the poor tradesman’s pardon. 

This, young gentlemen, is not told as an instance of Pen’s 
virtue, but rather of his weakness. It would have been much 
more virtuous to have had no prints at all. He still owed for 
the baubles which he sold in order to pay Fordsham’s bill, and 
his mother had cruelly to pinch herself in order to discharge 
the jeweller’s account, so that she was in the end the sufferer 
by the lad’s impertinent fancies and follies. We are not pre- 
senting Pen to you as a hero or as a model, only as a lad, who, 
in the midst of a thousand vanities and weaknesses, has as yet 
some generous impulses, and is not altogether dishonest. 

We have said it was to the scandal of Mr. Buck the tutor 
that Pen’s extravagances became known : from the manner in 
which he entered college, the associates he kept, and the intro- 
ductions of Doctor Portman and the Major, Buck for a long 
time thought that his pupil was a man of large property, and 
wondered rather fhat he only wore a plain gown. Once on 
going up to London to the levee with an address from His 
Majesty’s Loyal University of Oxbridge, Buck had seen Major 
Pendennis at St. James’s in conversation with two knights of 
the garter, in the carriage of one of whom the dazzled tutor 


PENDENNIS. 


194 

saw the Major whisked away after the levee. He asked Pen to 
wine the instant he came back, let him off from chapels and 
felt perfectly sure that he was a young gentleman of large 
estate. 

Thus, he was thunderstruck when he heard the truth, and 
received a dismal confession from Pen. His university debts 
were large, and the tutor had nothing to do, and of course Pen 
did not acquaint him, with his London debts. What man ever 
does tell all when pressed by his friends about his liabilities ? 
The tutor learned enough to know that Pen was poor, that he 
had spent a handsome, almost a magnificent allowance, and had 
raised around him such a fine crop of debts, as it would be 
very hard work for any man to mow down ; for there is no 
plant thar grows so rapidly when once it has taken root. 

Perhaps it was because she was so tender and good that 
Pen was terrified lest his mother should know of his sins. 
“ I can’t bear to break it to her,” he said to the tutor in an 
agony of grief, “ O ! sir, I’ve been a villain to her ” — and he 
repented, and he wished he had the time to come over again, 
and he asked himself, Why, why did his uncle insist upon the 
necessity of living with great people, and in how much did all 
his grand acquaintance profit him ? ” 

They were not shy, but Pen thought they were, and slunk 
from them during his last terms at college. He was as gloomy 
as a death’s-head at parties, which he avoided of his own part, 
or to which his young friends soon ceased to invite him. Every- 
body knew that Pendennis was “ hard up.” That man Bloun- 
dell, who could pay nobody, and who was obliged to go down 
after three terms, was his ruin, the men said. His melancholy 
figure might be seen shirking about the lonely quadrangles in 
his battered old cap and torn gown, and he who had been the 
pride of the university but a year before, the man whom all the 
young ones loved to look at, was now the object of conversa- 
tion at freshmen’s wine -parties, and they spoke of him with 
wonder and awe. 

At last came the Degree Examinations. Many a young 
man of his year whose hob-nailed shoes Pen had derided, and 
whose face or coat he had caricatured — many a man whom he 
had treated with scorn in the lecture-room or. crushed with his 
eloquence in the debating-club — many of his own set who had 
not half his brains, but a little regularity and constancy of oc- 
cupation, took high places in the honors or passed with decent 
credit. And where in the list was Pen the superb, Pen the wit 
and dandy, Pen the poet and orator ? Ah, where was Pen the 


PENDENNIS. 


*95 


widow’s darling and sole pride ? Let us hide our heads, and 
shut up the page. The lists came out ; and a dreadful rumor 
rushed through the university, that Pendennis of Boniface was 
plucked. 


CHAPTER XX. 

FLIGHT AFTER DEFEAT. 

During the latter part of Pen’s residence at the University 
of Oxbridge, his uncle’s partiality had greatly increased for the 
lad. The Major was proud of Arthur, who had high spirits, 
frank manners, a good person, and high gentlemanlike bearing. 
It pleased the old London bachelor to see Pen walking with 
the young patricians of his university, and he (who was never 
known to entertain his friends, and whose stinginess had passed 
into a sort of by-word among some wags at the Club, who en- 
vied his many engagements and did not choose to consider his 
poverty) was charmed to give his nephew and the young lords 
snug little dinners at his lodgings, and to regale them with good 
claret, and his very best tons mots and stories : some of which 
would be injured by the repetition, for the Major’s manner of 
telling them was incomparably neat and careful ; and others, 
whereof the repetition would do good to nobody. He paid his 
court to their parents through the young men, and to himself as 
it were by their company. He made more than one visit to 
Oxbridge, where the young fellows were amused by entertaining 
the old gentleman, and gave parties and breakfasts, and fetes, 
partly to joke him and partly to do him honor. He plied them 
with his stories. He made himself juvenile and hilarious in 
the company of the young lords. He went to hear Pen at a 
grand debate at the Union, crowed and cheered, and rapped 
his stick in chorus with the cheers of the men, and was aston- 
ished at the boy’s eloquence and fire. He thought he had got 
a young Pitt for a nephew. He had an almost paternal fond- 
ness for Pen. He wrote to the lad letters with playful advice 
and the news of the town. He bragged about Arthur at his 
Clubs, and introduced him with pleasure into his conversation ; 
saying, that, Egad, the young fellows were putting the old ones 
to the wall ; that the lads who were Coming up, young lord 


PENDENNIS. 


196 

Plinlimmon, a friend of my boy, Young Lord Magnus Charters, 
a chum of my scapegrace, &c., would make a greater figure in 
the world than ever their fathers had done before them. He 
asked permission to bring Arthur to a grand f6te at Gaunt 
House ; saw him with ineffable satisfaction dancing with the 
sisters of the young noblemen before mentioned ; and gave 
himself as much trouble to procure cards of invitation for the 
lad to some good houses, as if he had been a mamma with a 
daughter to marry, and not an old half-pay officer in a wig. 
And he boasted everywhere of the boy’s great talents, and re- 
markable oratorical powers ; and of the brilliant degree he was 
going to take. Lord Runnymede would take him on his em- 
bassy, or the Duke would bring him in for one of his boroughs, 
he wrote over and over again to Helen ; who, for her part, was 
too ready to believe anything that anybody chose to say in 
favor of her son. 

And all this pride and affection of uncle and mother had 
been trampled down by Pen’s wicked extravagance and idle- 
ness ! I don’t envy Pen’s feelings (as the phrase is), as he 
thought of what he had done. He had slept and the tortoise 
had won the race. He had marred at its outset what might 
have been a brilliant career. He had dipped ungenerously into 
a generous mother’s purse ; basely and recklessly spilt her 
little cruse. O ! it was a coward hand that could strike and 
rob a creature so tender. And if Pen felt the wrong which he 
had done to others, are we to suppose that a young gentle- 
man of his vanity did not feel still more keenly the shame he 
had brought upon himself ? Let us be assured that there is no 
more cruel remorse than that ; and no groans more piteous 
than those of wounded self-love. Like Joe Miller’s friend, the 
Senior Wrangler, who bowed to the audience from his box at 
the play, because he and the king happened to enter the 
theatre at the same time, only with a fatuity by no means so 
agreeable to himself, poor Arthur Pendennis felt perfectly con- 
vinced that all England would remark the absence of his name 
from the examination-lists, and talk about his misfortune. His 
wounded tutor, his many duns the skip and bed-maker who 
waited upon him, the undergraduates of his own time and 
the years below him, whom he had patronized or scorned — 
how could he bear to look any of them in the face now ? 
He rushed to his rooms, into which he shut himself, and there 
he penned a letter to his tutor, full of thanks, regards, remorse, 
and despair, requesting that his name might be taken off the 
college books, and intimating a wish and expectation that death 


PENDENNIS. 


J 97 

would speedily end the woes of the disgraced Arthur Pen- 
dennis. 

Then he slunk out, scarcely knowing whither he went, but 
mechanically taking the unfrequented little lanes by the backs 
of the colleges, until he cleared the university precincts, and 
got down to the banks of the Camisis river, now deserted, but 
so often alive with the boat-races, and the crowds of cheering 
gownsmen, he wandered on and on, until he found himself at 
some miles’ distance from Oxbridge, or rather was found by 
some acquaintance, leaving that city. 

As Pen went up a hill, a drizzling January rain beating in 
his face, and his ragged gown flying behind him — for he had 
not divested himself of his academical garments since the 
morning — a post-chaise came rattling up the road, on the box of 
which a servant was seated, whilst within, or rather half out of 
the carriage window, sat a yopng gentleman smoking cigar, 
and loudly encouraging the postboy. It was our young ac- 
quaintance of Baymouth, Mr. Spavin, who had got his degree, 
and was driving homewards in triumph in his yellow post-chaise. 
He caught sight of the figure, madly gesticulating as he worked 
up the hill, and poor Pen’s pale and ghastly face as the chaise 
whirled by him. 

“Wo!” roared Mr. Spavin to the postboy, and the horses 
stopped in their mad career, and the carriage pulled up some 
fifty yards before Pen. He presently heard his own name 
shouted, and beheld the upper half of the body of Mr. Spavin 
thrust out of the side window of the vehicle, and beckoning 
Pen vehemently towards it. 

Pen stopped, hesitated — nodded his head fiercely, and 
pointed onwards, as if desirous that the postilion should pro- 
ceed. He did not speak : but his countenance must have 
looked very desperate, for young Spavin, having stared at him 
with an expression of blank alarm, jumped out of the carriage 
presently, ran towards Pen holding out his hand, and grasping 
Pen’s said, “ I say — hullo, old boy, where are you going, and 
what’s the row now?” 

“I’m going where I deserve to go,” said Pen with an im- 
precation. 

“ This ain’t the way,” said Mr. Spavin, smiling. “ This is 
the Fenbury road. I say, Pen, don’t take on because you are 
plucked. It’s nothing when you are used to it. I’ve been 
plucked three times, old boy— and after the first time I didn’t 
care. Glad it’s over, though. You’ll have better luck next 
time.” 


198 


PENDENNIS . 


Pen looked at his early acquaintance, — who had been 
plucked, who had been rusticated, who had only, after repeated 
failures, learned to read and write correctly, and who, in spite 
of all these drawbacks, had attained the honor of a degree. 
“ This man has passed,” he thought, “ and I have failed ! ” It 
was almost too much for him to bear. 

“ Good-by, Spavin,” said he ; “ I’m very glad you are 
through. Don’t let me keep you ; I’m in a hurry — I’m going 
to town to-night.” 

“ Gammon,” said Mr. Spavin. “ This ain’t the way to 
town ; this is the Fenbury road, I tell you.” 

“I was just going to turn back,” Pen said. 

“ All the coaches are full with the men going down,” Spavin 
said. Pen winced. “ You’d not get a place for a ten-pound 
note. Get into my yellow ; I’ll drop you at Mudford, where 
you have a chance of the Fenbury mail. I’ll lend you a hat 
and a coat ; I’ve got lots. Come along ; jump in, old boy — go 
it, leathers ! ” — and in this way Pen found himself in Mr. 
Spavin’s post-chaise, and rode with that gentleman as far as the 
Ram Inn at Mudford, fifteen miles from Oxbridge ; where the 
Fenbury mail changed horses, and where Pen got a place on 
to London. 

The next day there was an immense excitement in Boniface 
College, Oxbridge, where, for some time, a rumor prevailed, to 
the terror of Pen’s tutor and tradesmen, that Pendennis, mad- 
dened at losing his degree, had made away with himself — a 
battered cap, in which his name was almost discernible, together 
with a seal bearing his crest of an eagle looking at a now ex- 
tinct sun, had been found three miles on the Fenbury road, 
near a mill stream ; and, for four-and-twenty hours, it was sup- 
posed that poor Pen had flung himself into the stream, until 
letters arrived from him, bearing the London post-mark. 

The mail reached London at the dreary hour of five ; and 
he hastened to the inn at Covent Garden, at which he was ac- 
customed to put up, where the ever-wakeful porter admitted 
him, and showed him to a bed. Pen looked hard at the man, 
and wondered whether Boots knew he was plucked ? When in 
bed he could not sleep there. He tossed about until the ap- 
pearance of the dismal London daylight, when he sprang up 
desperately, and walked off to his uncle’s lodgings in Bury 
Street ; where the maid, who was scouring the steps, looked 
up suspiciously at him, as he caihe with an unshaven face, and 
yesterday’s linen. He thought she knew of his mishap, too. 
“Good ev^ns ! Mr. Harthur, what as appened, sir ? ” Mr 


PENDENNIS . 


199 

Morgan, the valet, asked, who had just arranged the well- 
brushed clothes and shiny boots at the door of his master’s 
bedroom, and was carrying in his wig to the Major. 

“ I want to see my uncle,” he cried, in a ghastly voice, and 
flung himself down on a chair. 

Morgan backed before the pale and desperate-looking young 
man, with terrified and wondering glances, and disappeared 
into his master’s apartment. 

“ The Major put his head out of the bedroom door, as soon 
as he had his wig on. 

“ What ? examination over ? Senior Wrangler, double First 
Class, hay ? ” said the old gentleman — “ I’ll come directly ; ” 
and the head disappeared. 

“ They don’t know what has happened,” groaned Pen ; 
“ what will they say when they know all ? ” 

Pen had been standing with his back to the window, and to 
such a dubious light as Bury Street enjoys of a foggy January 
morning, so that his uncle could not see the expression of the 
young man’s countenance, or the looks of gloom and despair 
which even Mr. Morgan had remarked. 

But when the Major came out of his dressing-room neat 
and radiant, and preceded by faint odors from Delcroix’s shop, 
from which emporium Major Pendennis’s wig and his pocket- 
handkerchief got their perfume, he held ut one of his hands 
to Pen, and was about addressing him in his cheery high-toned 
voice, when he caught sight of the boy’s face at length, and 
dropping his hand, said, “ Good God ! Pen, what’s the mat- 
ter ? ” 

“ You’ll see it in the papers at breakfast, sir,” Pen said. 

“ See what ? ” 

“ My name isn’t there, sir.” 

“ Hang it, why should it be ? ” asked the Major, more per- 
plexed. 

“I have lost everything, sir,” Pen groaned out; “my 
honor’s gone ; I’m ruined irretrievably ; I can’t go back to Ox- 
bridge.” 

“ Lost your honor ? ” screamed out the Major. “ Heaven 
alive ! you don’t mean to say you have shown the white 
feather ? ” 

Pen laughed bitterly at the word feather, and repeated it. 
“ No, it isn’t that, sir. I’m not afraid of being shot ; I wish to 
God anybody would shoot me. I have not got my degree. I — 
I’m plucked, sir.” 

The Major had heard of plucking, but in a very vague and 


200 


PENDENNIS. 


cursory wa^, and concluded that it was some ceremony per- 
formed corporally upon rebellious university-youth. “ I wonder 
you can look me in the face after such a disgrace, sir,” he said ; 
“ I wonder you submitted to it as a gentleman.” 

“ I couldn’t help it, sir. I did my classical papers well 
enough : it was those infernal mathematics, which I have always 
neglected.” 

“ Was it — was it done in public, sir ? ” the Major said. 

“What?” 

“ The — the plucking ? ” asked the guardian, looking Pen 
anxiously in the face. 

Pen perceived the error under which his guardian was labor- 
ing, and in the midst of his misery the blunder caused the poor 
wretch a faint smile, and served to bring down the conversation 
from the tragedy-key, in which Pen had been disposed to carry 
it on. He explained to his uncle that he had gone in to pass 
his examination, and failed. On which the Major said, that 
though he had expected far better things of his nephew, there 
was no great misfortune in this, and no dishonor as far as he 
saw, and that Pen must try again. 

“ Me again at Oxbridge,” Pen thought, “ after such a 
humiliation as that ! ” He felt that, except he went down to 
burn the place, he could not enter it.. 

But it was when he came to tell his uncle of his debts that 
the other felt surprise and anger most keenly, and broke out 
into speeches most severe upon Pen, which the lad bore, as 
best he might, without flinching. He had determined to make 
a clean breast, and had formed a full, true, and complete list of 
all his bills and liabilities at the university, and in London. 
They consisted of various items, such as 

London Tailor. Oxbridge do. 

Oxbridge do. Bill for horses. 

Haberdasher, for shirts and gloves. Printseller. 


Jeweller. 

College Cook. 

Crump, for desserts. 
Bootmaker. 

Wine Merchant in London. 


Books. 

Binding. 

Hairdresser and Perfumery. 
Hotel Bill in London. 
Sundries. 


All which items the reader may fill in at his pleasure — such 
accounts have been inspected by the parents of many university 
youth, — and it appeared that Mr. Pen’s bills in all amounted to 
about seven hundred pounds ; and, furthermore, it was calcu^ 


PENDENNIS. 


201 


lated that he had had more than twice that sum of ready money 
during his stay at Oxbridge. This sum he had spent, and for 
it had to show — what ? 

“ You need not press a man who is down, sir,” Pen said to 
his uncle, gloomily. “ I know very well, how wicked and idle 
I have been. My mother won’t like to see me dishonored, sir,” 
he continued, with his voice failing ; “ and I know she will 
pay these accounts. But I shall ask her for no more money.” 

“As you like, sir,” the Major said. “You are of age, and 
my hands are washed of your affairs. But you can’t live without 
money, and have no means of making it that I see, though you 
have a fine talent in spending it, and it is my belief that you 
will proceed as you have begun, and ruin your mother before 
you are five years older. — Good-morning ; it is time for me to 
go breakfast. My engagements won’t permit me to see you 
much during the time that you stay in London. I presume 
that you will acquaint your mother with the news which you 
have just conveyed to me.” 

And pulling on his hat, and trembling in his limbs some- 
what, Major Pendennis walked out of his lodgings before his 
nephew, *and went ruefully off to take his accustomed corner at 
the Club. He saw the Oxbridge examination-lists in the 
morning papers, and read over the names, not understanding 
the business, with mournful accuracy. He consulted various 
old fogies of his acquaintance, in the course of the day, at his 
Clubs ; Wenham, a Dean, various Civilians ; and, as it is called, 
“ took their opinion,” showing to some of them the amount of 
his nephew’s debts, which he had dotted down on the back of a 
card, and asking what was to be done, and whether such debts 
were not monstrous, preposterous ? What was to be done ? — 
There was nothing for it but to pay. Wenham and the others 
told the Major of young men who owed twice as much — five 
times as much — as Arthur, and with no means at all to pay. 
The consultations, and calculations, and opinions, comforted 
the Major somewhat. After all, he was not to pay. 

But he thought bitterly of the many plans he had formed 
to make a man of his nephew, of the sacrifices which he 
had made, and of the manner in which he was "disappointed. 
And he wrote off a letter to Doctor Portman, informing 
him of the direful events which had taken place, and begging 
the Doctor to break them to Helen. For the orthodox 
old gentleman preserved the regular routine in all things, *and 
was of opinion that it was more correct to “ break ” a piece of 
bad news to a person by means of a (possibly maladroit and 


2 02 


PENDENNIS . 


unfeeling) messenger, than to convey it simply to its destination 
by a note. So the Major wrote to Doctor Portman, and then 
went out to dinner, one of the saddest men in any London 
dining-room that day. 

Pen, too, wrote his letter, and skulked about London streets 
for the rest of the day, fancying that everybody was looking at 
him and whispering to his neighbor, “ That is Pendennis of 
Boniface, who was plucked yesterday.” His letter to his 
mother was full of tenderness and remorse : he wept the bitterest 
tears over it — and the repentance and passion soothed him to 
some degree. 

He saw a party of roaring young blades from Oxbridge in 
the coffee-room of his hotel, and slunk away from them, and 
paced the streets. He remembers, he says, the prints which 
he saw hanging up at Ackermann’s window in the rain, and a 
book which he read at a stall near the Temple : at night he 
went to the pit of the play, and saw Miss Fotheringay, but he 
doesn’t in the least recollect in what piece. 

On the second day there came a kind letter from his tutor, 
containing many grave and appropriate remarks upon the event 
which had befallen him, but strongly urging Pen not to take 
his name off the university books, and to retrieve a disaster 
which, everybody knew, was owing to his own carelessness alone, 
and which he might repair by a month’s application. He said 
he had ordered Pen’s skip to pack up some trunks of the young 
gentleman’s wardrobe, which duly arrived with fresh copies of 
all Pen’s bills laid on the top. 

On the third day there arrived a letter from Home ; which 
Pen read in his bedroom, and the result of which was that he 
fell down on his knees, with his head in the bed-clothes, and 
there prayed out his heart, and humbled himself ; and having 
gone down stairs and eaten an immense breakfast, he sallied 
forth and took his place at the Bull and Mouth, Piccadilly, by 
the Chatteris coach for that evening. 


PENDENN1S. 


203 


CHAPTER XXI. 

P R O D I G A'L ’ S RETURN. 

Such a letter as the Major wrote, of course sent Doctoi 
Portman to Fairoaks, and he went off with that alacrity which 
a good man shows when he has disagreeable news to commu- 
nicate. He wishes the deed were done, and done quickly. He 
is sorry, but que voulez-vous ? the tooth must be taken out, and 
he has you into the chair, and it is surprising with what courage 
and vigor of wrist he applies the forceps. Perhaps he would 
not be quite so active or eager if it were his tooth ; but, in fine, 
it is your duty to have it out. So the Doctor, having read the 
epistle out to Mira and Mrs. Portman, with many damnatory 
comments upon the young scapegrace who was going deeper 
and deeper into perdition, left those ladies to spread the news 
through the Clavering society, which they did with their accus- 
tomed accuracy and despatch, and strode over to Fairoaks to 
break the intelligence to the widow. 

She had the news already. She had read Pen’s letter, and 
it had relieved her somehow. A gloomy presentiment of evil 
had been hanging over her for many, many months past. She 
knew the worst now, and her darling boy was come back to her 
repentant and tender-hearted. Did she want more ? All that 
the Rector could say (and his remarks were both dictated by 
common sense, and made respectable by antiquity) could not 
bring Helen to feel any indignation or particular unhappiness, 
except that the boy should be unhappy. What was this degree 
that they made such an outcry about, and what good would it 
do Pen ? Why did Doctor Portman and his uncle insist upon 
sending the boy to a place where there was so much temptation 
to be risked, and so little good to be won ? Why didn’t they 
leave him at home with his mother ? As for his debts, of course 
they must be paid ; — his debts ! — wasn’t his father’s money all 
his, and hadn’t he a right to spend it ? In this way the widow 
met the virtuous Doctor, and all the arrows of his- indignation 
somehow took no effect upon her gentle bosom. 

For some time past, an agreeable practice, known since 
times ever so ancient, by which brothers and sisters are wont to 
exhibit their affection towards one another, and in which Pen 
and his little sister Laura had been accustomed to indulge 


PENDENNIS. 


204* 

pretty frequently in their childish days, had been given up by 
the mutual consent of those two individuals. Coming back 
from college after an absence from home of some months, in 
place of the simple girl whom he had left behind him, Mr. 
Arthur found a tall, slim, handsome young lady, to whom he 
could not somehow proffer the kiss which he had been in the 
habit of administering previously, and who received him with a 
gracious curtsey, and a proffered hand, and with a great blush 
which rose up to the cheek, just upon the very spot which young 
Pen had been used to salute. 

I am not good at descriptions of female beauty ; and, indeed, 
do not care for it in the least (thinking that goodness and virtue 
are, of course, far more advantageous to a young lady than any 
mere fleeting charms of person and face),*and so shall not 
attempt any particular delineation of Miss Laura Bell at the age 
of sixteen years. At that age she had attained her present 
altitude of five feet four inches, so that she was called tall and 
gawky by some, and a Maypole by others, of her own sex, who 
prefer littler women But if she was a Maypole, she had beauti- 
ful roses about her head, and it is a fact that many swains were 
disposed to dance round her. She was ordinarily pale, with a 
faint rose tinge in her cheeks ; but they flushed up in a minute 
when occasion called, and continued so blushing ever so long, 
the roses remaining after the emotion had passed away which 
had summoned those pretty flowers into existence. Her eyes 
have been described as very large from her earliest childhood, 
and retained that characteristic in later life. Good-natured 
critics (always females) said that she was in the habit of making 
play with those eyes, and ogling the gentlemen and ladies in 
her company ; but the fact is, that Nature had made them so 
to shine and to look, and they could no more help so looking 
and shining than one star can help being brighter than another. 
It was doubtless to mitigate their brightness that Miss Laura’s 
eyes were provided with two pairs of veils in the shape of the 
longest and finest black eyelashes, so that, when she closed her 
eyes, the same people who found fault with those orbs, said that 
she wanted to show her eyelashes off ; and, indeed, I dare say 
that to see her asleep would have been a pretty sight. 

As for her complexion, that was nearly as brilliant as Lady 
Mantrap’s, and without the powder which her ladyship uses. 
Her nose must be left to the reader’s imagination : if her mouth 
was rather large (as Miss Piminy avers, who, but for her known 
appetite, one would think could not swallow anything larger 
than a button) everybody allowed that her smile was charming, 


PENDENNIS. 


205 

and showed off a set of pearly teeth, whilst her voice was so 
low and sweet, that to hear it was like listening to sweet music. 
Because she is in the habit of wearing very long dresses, people 
of course say that her feet are not small : but it may be, that 
they are of the size becoming her figure, and it does not follow, 
because Mrs. Pincher is always putting her foot out, that all 
other ladies should be perpetually bringing theirs on the tapis. 
In fine, Miss Laura Bell, at the age of sixteen, was a sweet 
young lady. Many thousands of such are to be found, let us 
hope, in this country, where there is no lack of goodness, and 
modesty, and purity, and beauty. 

Now, Miss Laura, since she had learned to think for herself 
(and in the past two years her mind and her person had both 
developed themselves considerably), had only been half pleased 
with Pen’s generdl conduct and bearing. His letters to his 
mother at home had become of late very rare and short. It 
was in vain that the fond widow urged how constant Arthur’s 
occupations and studies were, and how many his engagements. 
“ It is better that he should lose a prize,” Laura said, “ than 
forget his mother : and indeed, mamma, I don’t see that he gets 
many prizes. Why doesn’t he come home and stay with you, 
instead of passing his vacations at his great friends’ fine houses ? 
There is nobody there will love him half as much as — as you 
do.” “ As I do only, Laura,” sighed out Mrs. Pendennis. 
Laura declared stoutly that she did not love Pen a bit, when he 
did not do his duty to his mother : nor would she be convinced 
by any of Helen’s fond arguments, that the boy must make his 
way in the world ; that his uncle was most desirous that Pen 
should cultivate the acquaintance of persons who were likely to 
befriend him in life ; that men had a thousand ties and calls 
which women could not understand, and so forth. Perhaps 
Helen no more believed in these excuses than her adopted 
daughter did ; but she tried to believe that she believed them, 
and comforted herself with the maternal infatuation. And that 
is a point whereon I suppose many a gentleman has reflected, 
that, do what we will, we are pretty sure of the woman’s love 
that once has been ours ; and that that untiring tenderness and 
forgiveness never fail us. 

“ Also, there had been that freedom, not to say audacity, in 
Arthur’s latter talk and ways, which had shocked and displeased 
Laura. Not that he ever offended her by rudeness, or addressed 
to her a word which she ought not to hear, for Mr. Pen was a 
gentleman, and by nature and education polite to every woman 
high and low ; but he spoke lightly and laxly of women in gem 


20 6 


PENDENNIS . 


eral ; was less courteous in his actions than in his words — neg* 
lectful in sundry ways, and in many of the little offices of life. 
It offended Miss Laura that he should smoke his horrid pipes 
in the house ; that he should refuse to go to church with his 
mother, or on walks or visits with her, and be found yawning 
over his novel in his dressing-gown, when the gentle widow 
returned from those duties. The hero of Laura’s early infancy, 
about whom she had passed so many, many nights talking with 
Helen (who recited endless stories of the boy’s virtues, and 
love, and bravery, when he was away at school), was a very 
different person from the young man whom now she knew ; 
bold and brilliant, sarcastic and defiant, seeming to scorn the 
simple occupations or pleasures, or even devotions, of the 
women with whom he lived, and whom he qijtted on such light 
pretexts. 

The Fotheringay affair, too, when Laura came to hear of it 
(which she did first by some sarcastic allusions of Major Pen- 
dennis, when on a visit to Fairoaks, and then from their neigh- 
bors at Clavering, who had plenty of information to give heron 
this head), vastly shocked and outraged Miss Laura. A Pen- 
dennis fling himself away on such a woman as that ! Helen’s 
boy galloping away from home, day after day, to fall on his 
knees to an astress, and drink with her horrid father ! A 
good son want to bring such a man and such a woman into 
his house, and set her over his mother! “I would have run 
away, mamma ; I would, if I had had to walk barefoot through 
the snow,” Laura said. 

“ And you would have left me too, then ? ” Plelen answered ; 
on which, of course, Laura withdrew her previous observation, 
and the two women rushed into each other’s embraces with 
that warmth which belonged to both their natures, and which 
characterizes not a few of their sex. Whence came all this in- 
dignation of Miss Laura about Arthur’s passion ? Perhaps she 
did not know, that, if men throw themselves away upon women, 
women throw themselves away upon men, too ; and that there 
is no more accounting for love, than for any other physical 
liking or antipathy : perhaps she had been misinformed by the 
Clavering people and old Mrs. Portman, who was vastly bitter 
against Pen, especially since his impertinent behavior to the 
Doctor, and since the wretch had smoked cigars in church-time : 
perhaps, finally, she was jealous ; but this is a vice in which 
it is said the ladies very seldom indulge. 

Albeit she was angry with Pen, against his mother she had 
no such feeling ; but devoted herself to Helen with the utmost 


EENDENNIS. 


207 


force of her girlish affection — such affection as women, whose 
hearts are disengaged, are apt to bestow upon the near female 
friend. It was devotion — it was passion — it was all sorts of 
fondness and folly ; it was a profusion of caresses, tender 
epithets and endearments, such as it does not become sober 
historians with beards to narrate. Do not let us men despise 
these instincts because we cannot feel them. . These women 
were made for our comfort and delectation, gentlemen, with all 
the rest of the minor animals. 

But as soon as Miss Laura heard that Pen was unfortunate 
and unhappy, all her wrath against him straightway vanished, 
and gave place to the most tender and unreasonable compas- 
sion. He was the Pen of the old days once more restored to 
her, the frank and affectionate, the generous and tender-hearted. 
She at once took side with Helen against Doctor Portman, 
when he outcried at the enormity of Pen’s transgression?. 
Debts ? what were his debts ? they were a trifle ; he had been 
thrown into expensive society by his uncle’s order, and of 
course was obliged to live in the same manner as the young 
gentleman whose company he frequented. Disgraced by not 
getting his degree ? the poor boy was ill when he went in for 
the examinations : he couldn’t think of his mathematics and 
stuff on account of those very debts which oppressed him ; 
very likely some of the odious tutors and masters were jealous 
of him, and had favorites of their own whom they wanted to 
put over his head. Other people disliked him and were cruel 
to him, and were unfair to him, she was very sure. And so, 
with flushing cheeks and eyes bright with anger, this young crea- 
ture reasoned ; and she went up and seized Helen’s hand, and 
kissed her in the Doctor’s presence, and her looks braved the 
Doctor, and seemed to ask how he dared to say a word against 
her darling mother’s Pen ? 

When that divine took his leave, not a little discomfited 
and amazed at the pertinacious obstinacy of the women, Laura 
repeated her embraces and arguments with tenfold fervor to 
Helen, who felt that there was a great deal of cogency in 
most of the latter. There must be some jealousy against 
Pen. She felt quite sure that he had offended some of the 
examiners, who had taken a mean revenge of him — nothing 
more likely. Altogether, the announcement of the misfor- 
tune vexed these two ladies very little indeed. Pen, who 
was plunged in his shame and grief in London, and torn with 
great remorse for thinking of his mother’s sorrow, would have 
wondered, had he seen how easily she bore the calamity. In- 


208 


PEND ENNIS. 


deed, calamity is welcome to women if they think it will bring 
truant affection home again : and if you have reduced your 
mistress to a crust, depend upon it that she won’t repine, and 
only take a very little bit of it for herself, provided you will 
eat the remainder in her company. 

And directly the Doctor was gone, Laura ordered fires to 
be lighted in Mr. Arthur’s rooms, and his bedding to be aired ; 
and had these preparations completed by the time Helen had 
finished a most tender and affectionate letter to Pen : when the 
girl, smiling fondly, took her mamma by the hand, and led her 
into those apartments where the fires were blazing so cheer- 
fully, and there the two kind creatures sat down on the bed, and 
talked about Pen ever so long. Laura added a postscript to 
Helen’s letter, in which she called him her dearest Pen, and 
bade him come home instantly , with two of the handsomest 
dashes under the word, and be happy with his mother and his 
affectionate sister Laura. 

In the middle of the night — as these two ladies, after read- 
ing their Bibles a great deal during the evening, and after tak- 
ing just a look into Pen’s room as they passed to their own — in 
the middle of the night, I say, Laura, whose head not unfre- 
quently chose to occupy that pillow which the nightcap of 
the late Pendennis had been accustomed to press, cried out 
suddenly, “ Mamma, are you awake ? ” 

Helen stirred and said, “Yes, I’m awake.” The truth is, 
though she had been lying quite still and silent, she had not 
been asleep one instant, but had been looking at the night- 
lamp in the chimney, and had been thinking of Pen for hours 
and hours. 

Then Miss Laura (who had been acting with similar hypoc- 
risy, and lying, occupied with her own thoughts, as motionless 
as Helen’s brooch, with Pen’s and Laura’s hair in it, on the 
frilled white pincushion on the dressing-table) began to tell 
Mrs. Pendennis of a notable plan which she had been forming 
in her busy little brains ; and by which all Pen’s embarrass- 
ments would be made to vanish in a moment, and without the 
least trouble to anybody. 

“ You know, mamma,” this young lady said, “ that I have 
been living with you for ten years, during which time you have 
never taken any of my money, and have been treating me just 
as if I was a charity girl. Now, this obligation has offended 
me very much, because I am proud and do not like to be be- 
holden to people. And as, if I had gone to school — only I 
wouldn’t — it must have cost me at least fifty pounds a year, it 


PENDENNIS. 


209 

is clear that I owe you fifty times ten pounds, which I know 
you have put into the bank of Chatteris for me, and which 
doesn’t belong to me a bit. Now, to-morrow we will go to 
Chatteris, and see that nice old Mr. Rowdy, with the bald 
head, and ask him for it, — not for his head, but for the five 
hundred pounds : and I dare say he will lend you two more, 
which we will save and pay back : and we will send the money 
to Pen, who can pay all his debts without hurting anybody, 
and then we will live happy ever after.” 

What Helen replied to this speech need not be repeated, as 
the widow’s answer was made up of a great number of inco- 
herent ejaculations, embraces, and other irrelative matter. 
But the two women slept well after that talk ; and when the 
night-lamp went out with a splutter, and the sun rose gloriously 
over the purple hills, and the birds began to sing and pipe 
cheerfully amidst the leafless trees and glistening evergreens 
on Fairoaks lawn, Helen woke too, and as she looked at the 
sweet face of the girl sleeping beside her, her lips parted 
with a smile, blushes on her cheeks, her spotless bosom heav- 
ing and falling with gentle undulations, as if happy dreams 
were sweeping over it — Pen’s mother felt happy and grateful 
beyond all power of words, save such as pious women offer up 
to the Beneficent Dispenser of love and mercy — in Whose 
honor a chorus of such praises is constantly rising up all round 
the world. 

Although it was January and rather cold weather, so sin- 
cere was Mr. Pen’s remorse, and so determined his plans of 
economy, that he would not take an inside place in the coach, 
but sat up behind with his friend the Guard, who remembered 
his former liberality, and lent him plenty of great coats. Per- 
haps it was the cold that made his knees tremble as he got 
down at the lodge gate, or it may be that he was agitated at 
the notion of seeing the kind creature for whose love he had 
made so selfish a return. Old John was waiting to receive his 
master’s baggage, but he appeared in a fustian jacket, and no 
longer wore his livery of drab and blue. “ I’se garner and 
stable man, and lives in the ladge now,” this worthy man re- 
marked, with a grin of welcome to Pen, and something of a 
blush ; but instantly as Pen turned the corner of the shrubbery 
and was out of eye-shot of the coach, Helen made her appear- 
ance, her face beaming with lov.e and forgiveness — for forgiving 
is what some women love best of all. 

We may be sure that the widow, having a certain other ob- 
ject in view, had lost no time in writing off to Pen an account 

*4 


210 


PEND ENNIS. 


of the noble, the magnanimous, the magnificent offer of Laura, 
filling up her letter with a profusion of benedictions upon both 
her children. It was probably the knowledge of this money* 
obligation which caused Pen to blush very much when he saw 
Laura, who was in waiting in the hall, and who this time, and for 
this time only, broke through the little arrangement of which we 
have spoken, as having subsisted between her and Arthur for the 
last few years ; but the truth is, there has been a great deal too 
much said about kissing in the present chapter. 

So the Prodigal came home, and the fatted calf was killed 
for him, and he was made as happy as two simple women could 
make him. No allusions were made to the Oxbridge mishap, 
or questions asked as to his farther proceedings, for some time. 
But Pen debated these anxiously in his own mind, and up in 
his own room, where he passed much of his time in cogitation. 

A few days after he came home, he rode to Chatteris on 
his horse, and came back on the top of the coach. He then in- 
formed his mother that he had left the horse to be sold ; and 
when that operation was effected, he handed her over the 
check, which she, and possibly Pen himself, thought was an 
act of uncommon virtue and self-denial, but which Laura pro- 
nounced to be only strict justice. 

He rarely mentioned the loan which she had made, and 
which, indeed, had been accepted by the widow with certain 
modifications ; but once or twice, and with great hesitation and 
stammering, he alluded to it, and thanked her. It evidently 
pained his vanity to be beholden to the orphan for succor. He 
was wild to find some means of repaying her. 

He left off drinking wine, and betook himself, but with great 
moderation, to the refreshment of whiskey-and-water. He gave 
up cigar smoking ; but it must be confessed that of late years 
he had liked pipes and tobacco as well or even better, so that 
this sacrifice was not a very severe one. 

He fell asleep a great deal after dinner when he joined the 
ladies in the drawing-room, and was certainly very moody and 
melancholy. He watched the coaches with great interest, 
walked in to read the papers at Clavering assiduously, dined 
with anybody who would ask him (and the widow was glad that 
he should have any entertainment in their solitary place), and 
played a good deal at cribbage with Captain Glanders. 

He avoided Dr. Portman, who, in his turn, whenever Pen 
passed, gave him very severe looks from under his shovel-hat. 
He went to church with his mother, however, very regularly, 


PEMDENfiftS. 


211 


and read prayers for her at home to the little household. Al- 
ways humble, it was greatly diminished now : a couple of maids 
did the work of the house of Fairoaks : the silver dish-covers 
never saw the light at all. John put on his livery to go to 
church, and assert his dignity on Sundays, but it was only for 
form’s sake. He was gardener and out-door man, vice Upton, 
resigned. There was but little fire in Fairoaks kitchen, and 
John and the maids drank their evening beer there by the 
light of a single candle. All this was Mr. Pen’s doing, and the 
state of things did not increase his cheerfulness. 

For some time Pen said no power on earth could induce 
him to go back to Oxbridge again, after his failure there ; but 
one day, Laura said to him, with many blushes, that she thought, 
as some sort of reparation, of punishment on himself for his — 
for his idleness, he ought to go back and get his degree, if he 
could fetch it by doing so ; and so back Mr. Pen went. 

A plucked man is a dismal being in a university ; belonging 
to no set of men there, and owned by no one. Pen felt himself 
plucked indeed of all the fine feathers which he had worn during 
his brilliant years, and rarely appeared out of his college ; regu- 
larly going to morning chapel, and shutting himself up in his 
rooms of nights, away from the noise and suppers of the under- 
graduates. There were no duns about his door, they were all 
paid — scarcely any cards were left there. The men of his year 
had taken their degrees, and were gone. He went into a sec- 
ond examination, and passed with perfect ease. He was some- 
what more easy in his mind when he appeared in his bachelor’s 
gown. 

On his way back from Oxbridge he paid a visit to his uncle 
in London ; but the old gentleman received him with very cold 
looks, and would scarcely give him his forefinger to shake. He 
called a second time, but Morgan, the valet, said his master was 
from home. 

Pen came back to Fairoaks, and to his books and to his 
idleness, and loneliness and despair. He commenced several 
tragedies, and wrote many copies of verses of a gloomy cast. 
He formed plans of reading and broke them. He thought 
about enlisting — about the Spanish legion — about a profession. 
He chafed against his captivity, and cursed the idleness which 
had caused it. Helen said he was breaking his heart, and was 
sad to see his prostration. As soon as — they could afford it 
he should go about — he should go to London — he should be freed 
from the dull society of two poor women. It was dull — very, cer- 
tainly. The tender widow’s habitual melancholy seemed to 


PENDENN1S. 


ill 

deepen into a sadder gloom ; and Laura saw with alarm that 
the dear friend became every year more languid and weary, and 
that her pale cheek grew more wan. 


CHAPTER XXII. 

NEW FACES. 

The inmates of Fairoaks were drowsily pursuing this hum- 
drum existence, while the great house upon the hill, on the 
other side of the River Brawl, was shaking oil the slumber in 
which it had lain during the lives of two generations of masters, 
and giving extraordinary signs of renewed liveliness. 

Just about the time of Pen’s little mishap, and when he was 
so absorbed in the grief occasioned by that calamity as to take 
no notice of events which befell persons less interesting to him- 
self than Arthur Pendennis, an announcement appeared in the 
provincial journals which caused no small sensation in the 
county at least, and in all the towns, villages, halls and man- 
sions, and parsonages for many miles round Clavering Park. 
At Clavering Market ; at Cackleby Fair ; at Chatteris Sessions ; 
on Goosebury Green, as the squire’s carriage met the vicar’s 
one-horse contrivance, and the inmates of both vehicles stopped 
on the road to talk : at Tinkleton Church gate, as the bell was 
tolling in the sunshine, and the white smocks and scarlet cloaks 
came trooping over the green common, to Sunday worship ; in 
a hundred societies round about — the word was, that Clavering 
Park was to be inhabited again. 

Some five years before, the county papers had advertised 
the marriage at Florence, at the British Legation, of Francis 
Clavering, Bart., of Clavering Park, with Jemima Augusta, 
daughter of Samuel Snell, of Calcutta, Esq., and widow of 
the late J. Amory, Esq. At that time the legend in the 
county was that Clavering, who had been ruined for many 
a year, had married a widow from India with some money. 
Some of the county folks caught a sight of the newly-mar- 
ried pair. The Kickleburys, travelling in Italy, had seen 
them. Clavering occupied the Poggi Palace at Florence, gave 
parties, and lived comfortably — but could never come to Eng- 
land. Another year — young Peregrine, of Cackleby, making a 


PENDENNIS. 


213 


Long Vacation tour, had fallen in with the Claverings occupy- 
ing Schloss Schinkenstein, on the Mummul See. At Rome, at 
Lucca, at Nice, at the baths and gambling places of the Rhine 
and Belgium, thi s worthy couple might occasionally be heard of 
by the curious, and rumors of them came, as it were by gusts, 
to Clavering’s ancestral place. 

Their last place of abode was Paris, where they appear to 
have lived in great fashion and splendor after the news of the 
death of Samuel Snell, Esq., of Calcutta, reached his orphan 
daughter in Europe. 

Of Sir Francis Clavering’s antecedents little can be said that 
would be advantageous to that respected baronet. The son of 
an outlaw, living in a dismal old chateau near Bruges, this gen- 
tleman had made a feeble attempt to start in life with a com- 
mission in a dragoon regiment, and had broken down almost at 
the outset. Transactions at the gambling-table had speedily 
effected his ruin ; after a couple of years in the army he had 
been forced to sell out, had passed some time in Her Majesty’s 
prison of the Fleet, and had then shipped over to Ostend to 
join the gouty exile, his father. And in Belgium, France, and 
Germany, for some years, this decayed and abortive prodigal 
might be seen lurking about billiard-rooms and watering-places, 
punting at gambling-houses, dancing at boarding-house balls, 
and riding steeple-chases on other folks’ horses. 

It was at a boarding-house at Lausanne, that Francis Clav- 
ering made what he called the lucky coup of marrying the 
widow Amory, very lately returned from Calcutta. His father 
died soon after, by consequence of whose demise his wife be- 
came Lady Clavering. The title so delighted Mr. Snell of 
Calcutta, that he doubled his daughter’s allowance ; and, dying 
himself soon after, left a fortune to her and her children, the 
amount of which was, if not magnified by rumor, something 
very splendid indeed. 

Before this time there had been, not rumors unfavorable to 
Lady Clavering’s reputation, but unpleasant impressions re- 
garding her ladyship. The best English people abroad were 
shy of making her acquaintance ; her manners were not the 
most refined ; her origin was lamentably low and doubtful. 
The retired East Indians, who are to be found in considerable 
force in most of the continental towns frequented by English, 
spoke with much scorn of the disreputable old lawyer and indi- 
go-smuggler her father, and of Amory, her first husband, who 
had been mate of the Indiaman in which Miss Snell came out 
to join her father at Calcutta. Neither father nor daughter 


214 


EENDEtfNlS. 


were in society at Calcutta, or had ever been heard of at Govern 
ment House. Old Sir Jasper Rogers, who had been Chief Justice 
of Calcutta, had once said to his wife, that he could tell a queer 
story about Lady Clavering’s first husband ; but greatly to Lady 
Rogers’s disappointment, and that of the young ladies his daugh- 
ters, the old Judge could never be got to reveal that mystery. 

They were all, however, glad enough to go to Lady Claver- 
ing’s parties, when her ladyship took the Hotel Bouilli in the 
Rue Grenelle at Paris, and blazed out in the polite world there 
in the winter of 183 — . The Faubourg St. Germain took her up. 
Viscount Bagwig, our excellent ambassador, paid her marked 
attention. The princes of the family frequented her salons. 
The most rigid and noted of the English ladies resident in the 
French capital acknowledged and countenanced her ; the virtu- 
ous Lady Elderbury, the severe Lady Rockminster, the vener- 
able Countess of Southdown — people^ in a word, renowned for 
austerity, and of quite a dazzling moral purity : — so great and 
beneficent an influence had the possession of ten (some said 
twenty) thousand a year exercised upon Lady Clavering’s char- 
acter and reputation. And her munificence and good-will were 
unbounded. Anybody (in society) who had a scheme of charity 
was sure to find her purse open. The French ladies of piety 
got money from her to support their schools and convents ; 
she subscribed indifferently for the Armenian patriarch ; for 
Father Barbarossa, who came to Europe to collect funds for 
his monastery on Mount Athos ; for the Baptist Mission to 
Quashyboo, and the Orthodox Settlement in Feefawfoo, the 
largest and most savage of the Cannibal Islands. And it is 
on record of her, that on the same day on which Madame de 
Cricri got five Napoleons from her in support of the poor perse- 
cuted Jesuits, who were at that time in very bad odor in France, 
Lady Budelight put her down in her subscription-list for the 
Rev. J. Ramshorn, who had had a vision which ordered him to 
convert the Pope of Rome. And more than this, and for the 
benefit of the worldly, her ladyship gave the best dinners, and 
the grandest balls and suppers, which were known at Paris 
during that season. 

And it was during this time, that the good-natured lady 
must have arranged matters with her husband’s creditors in 
England, for Sir Francis reappeared in his native country, 
without fear of arrest ; was announced in the Morning Post, 
and the county paper, as having taken up his residence at 
Mivart’s Hotel ; and one day the anxious old housekeeper at 
Clavering House beheld a carriage and four horses drive up the 


EENDENNIS. 


**5 

long avenue, and stop before the moss-grown steps in front of 
the vast melancholy portico. 

Three gentlemen were in the carriage — an open one. On 
the back seat was our old acquaintance, Mr. Tatham of Chat- 
teris, whilst in the places of honor sat a handsome and portly 
gentleman enveloped in mustaches, whiskers, fur collars, and 
braiding, and by him a pale languid man, who descended feebly 
from the carriage, when the little lawyer, and the gentleman 
in fur, had nimbly jumped out of it. 

They walked up the great moss-grown steps to the hall-door, 
and a foreign attendant, with ear-rings and a gold laced cap, 
pulled strenuously at the great bell-handle at the cracked and 
sculptured gate. The bell was heard clanging loudly through 
the vast gloomy mansion. Steps resounded presently upon the 
marble pavement of the hall within ; and the doors opened, 
and finally, Mrs. Blenkinsop, the housekeeper, Polly, her aide- 
de-camp, and Smart, the keeper, appeared bowing humbly. 

Smart, the keeper, pulled the wisp of hay-colored hair which 
adorned his sunburnt forehead, kicked out his left heel, as if 
there were a dog biting at his calves, and brought down his 
head to a bow. Old Mrs. Blenkinsop dropped a curtsey. Little 
Polly, her aide-de-camp, made a curtsey, and several rapid bows ' 
likewise : and Mrs. Blenkinsop, with a great deal of emotion, 
quavered out, “ Welcome to Clavering, Sir Francis. It du my 
poor eyes good to see one of the family once more.” 

The speech and the greetings were all addressed to the grand 
gentleman in fur and braiding, who wore his hat so magnifi- 
cently on one side, and twirled his mustaches so royally. But 
he burst out laughing, and said, “ You’ve saddled the wrong 
horse, old lady — I’m not Sir Francis Clavering what’s come to 
revisit the halls of my ancestors. Friends and vassals ! behold 
your rightful lord ! ” 

And he pointed his hand towards the pale, languid gentle- 
man, who said, “ Don’t be an ass, Ned.” 

“Yes, Mrs. Blenkinsop, I’m Sir Francis Clavering; I recol- 
lect you quite well. Forget me, I suppose ? — How dy do ? ” 
and he took the old lady’s trembling hand ; and nodded in her 
astonished face, in a not unkind manner. 

Mrs. Blenkinsop declared upon her conscience that she 
would have known Sir Francis anywhere ; that he was the very 
image of Sir Francis his father, and of Sir John who had gone 
before. 

“ O yes — thanky — of course — very much obliged — and that 
sort of thing,” Sir Francis said, looking vacantly about the hall. 


PEND ENNIS. 


sSi6 

“ Dismal old place, ain’t it, Ned ? Never saw it but once, when 
my governor quarrelled with my grandfather, in the year twenty- 
thwee.” 

“ Dismal ? — beautiful ! — the Castle of Otranto ! — the Mys- 
teries of Udolpho, by Jove ! ” said the individual addressed as 
Ned. “ What a fire-place ! You might roast an elephant in it. 
Splendid carved gallery ! Inigo Jones, by Jove ! I’d lay five 
to two it’s Inigo Jones.” 

“ The upper part by Inigo Jones ; the lower was altered by 
the eminent Dutch architect Vanderputty, in George the First 
his time, by Sir Richard, fourth baronet,” said the housekeeper. 

“ O indeed,” said the Baronet. “ ’Gad, Ned, you know 
everything.” 

“ I know a few things, Frank,” Ned answered. “ I know 
that’s not a Snyders over the mantel-piece — bet you three to 
one it’s a copy. We’ll restore it, my boy. A lick of varnish, 
and it will come out wonderfully, sir. That old fellow in the 
red gown, I suppose, is Sir Richard.” 

“ Sheriff of the county, and sat in parliament in the reign 
ox Queen Anne,” said the housekeeper, wondering at the 
stranger’s knowledge ; “ that on the right is Theodosia, wife cf 
Harbottle, second baronet, by Lely, represented in the char- 
acter of Venus, the Goddess of Beauty, — her son Gregory, the 
third baronet, by her side, as Cupid, God of Love, with a bow 
and arrows • that on the next panel is Sir Rupert, made a knight 
banneret by Charles the First, and whose property was confus- 
cated by Oliver Cromwell.” 

“ Thank you — needn’t go on, Mrs. Blenkinsop,” said the 
Baronet. “ We’ll walk about the place ourselves. Frosch, 
give me a cigar. Have a cigar, Mr. Tatham ? ” 

Little Mr. Tatham tried a cigar' which Sir Francis’s courier 
handed to him, and over which the lawyer spluttered fearfully. 
“ Needn’t come with us, Mrs. Blenkinsop. What’s-his-name — 
you — Smart — feed the horses and wash their mouths. Sha’n’t 
stay long. Come along, Strong, — I know the way : I was here 
in twenty-thwee, at the end of my gwandfather’s time.” And 
Sir Francis and Captain Strong, for such was the style and title 
of Sir Francis’s friend, passed out of the hall into the reception 
rooms, leaving the discomfited Mrs. Blenkinsop to disappear 
by a side door which led to her apartments, now the only habit- 
able rooms in the long-uninhabited mansion. 

It was a place so big that no tenant could afford to live in 
it • and Sir Francis and his friend walked through room after 
room, admiring their vastness and dreary and deserted grandeur. 


PEND ENNIS. 


217 


On the right of the hall-door were the saloons and drawing- 
rooms, and on the other side the oak room, the parlor, the grand 
dining-room, the library, where Pen had found books in old 
days. Round three sides of the hall ran a gallery, by which, 
and corresponding passages, the chief bedrooms were ap- 
proached, and of which many were of stately proportions and 
exhibited marks of splendor. On the second story was a laby- 
rinth of little discomfortable garrets, destined for the attend- 
ants of the great folks who inhabited the mansion in the days 
when it was first built : and I do not know any more cheering 
mark of the increased philanthropy of our own times, than to 
contrast our domestic architecture with that of our ancestors, 
and to see how much better servants and poor are cared for at 
present, than in times when my lord and my lady slept under 
gold canopies, and their servants lay above them in quarters 
not so airy or so clean as stables are now. 

Up and down the house the two gentlemen wandered, the 
owner of the mansion being very silent and resigned about the 
pleasure of possessing it ; whereas the Captain, his friend, 
examined the premises with so much interest and eagerness 
that you would have thought he was the master, and the other 
the indifferent spectator of the place. “ I see capabilities in it 
— capabilities in it, sir,” cried the Captain. “Gad, sir, leave 
it to me, and I’ll make it the pride of the country, at a small 
expense. What a theatre we can have in the library here, the 
curtains between the columns which divide the room ! What 
a famous room for a galop ! — it will hold the whole shire. We’ll 
hang the morning parlor with the tapestry in your second salon 
in the Rue de Grenelle, and furnish the oak room with the 
Moyen-age cabinets and the armor. Armor looks splendid 
against black oak, and there’s a Venice glass in the Quai Vol- 
taire, which will suit that high mantel-piece to an inch, sir. 
The long saloon, white and crimson, of course ; the drawing- 
room yellow satin ; and the little drawing-room light blue, with 
lace over — hey ? ” 

“ I recollect my old governor caning me in that little room,” 
Sir Francis said sententiously ; “he always hated me, my olci 
governor.” 

“ Chintz is the dodge, I suppose, for my lady’s rooms — the 
suite in the landing, to the south, the bedroom, the sitting-room, 
and the dressing-room. We’ll throw a conservatory out, over 
the balcony. Where will you have your rooms ? ” 

“ Put mine in the north wing,” said the baronet, with a yawn, 
“ and out of the reach of Miss Amory’s confounded piano. I 
can’t bear it. She’s scweeching from morning till night.” 


2l8 


PENDENNIS. 


The Captain burst out laughing. He settled the whole fur- 
ther arrangements of the house in the course of their walk 
through it; and, the promenade ended, they went into the 
steward’s room, now inhabited by Mrs. Blenkinsop, and where 
Mr. Tatham was sitting poring over a plan of the estate, and 
the old housekeeper had prepared a collation in honor of her 
lord and master. 

Then they inspected the kitchen and stables, about both of 
which Sir Francis was rather interested, and Captain Strong 
was for examining the gardens ; but the baronet said, “ D — the 
gardens, and that sort of thing ! ” and finally he drove away 
from the house as unconcernedly asffie had entered it ; and that 
night the people of Clavering learned that Sir Francis Claver- 
ing had paid a visit to the Park, and was coming to live in the 
county. 

When this fact came to be known at Chatteris, all the folks 
in the place were set in commotion : High Church and Low 
Church, half-pay captains and old maids and dowagers, sport- 
ing squireens of the vicinage, farmers, tradesmen, and factory 
people — all the population in and round about the little place. 
The news was brought to Fairoaks, and received by the ladies 
there, and by Mr. Pen, with some excitement. “ Mrs. Pybus 
says there is a very pretty girl in the family, Arthur,” Laura 
said, who was as kind and thoughtful upon this point as women 
generally are : “ a Miss Amory, Lady Clavering’s daughter by 
her first marriage. Of course, you will fall in love with her as 
soon as she arrives.” 

Helen cried out, “ Don’t talk nonsense, Laura.” Pen 
laughed, and said, “ Well, there is the young Sir Francis for 
you.” 

“ He is but four years old,” Miss Laura replied. “ But I 
shall console myself with that handsome officer, Sir Francis’s 
friend. He was at church last Sunday, in the Clavering pew, 
and his mustaches were beautiful.” 

Indeed the number of Sir Francis’s family (whereof the 
members have all been mentioned in the above paragraphs) was 
pretty soon known in the town, and everything else, as nearly 
as human industry and ingenuity could calculate, regarding his 
household. The Park avenue and grounds were clotted now 
with town folks of the summer evenings, who made their way 
up to the great house, peered about the premises, and criticised 
the improvements which were taking place there. Loads upon 
loads of furniture arrived in numberless vans from Chatteris 
and London ; and numerous as the vans were, there was not 


PENDENNIS. 


tig 

one but Captain Glanders knew what it contained, and escorted 
the baggage up to the Park House. 

He and Captain Edward Strong had formed an intimate ac 
quaintance by this time. The younger Captain occupied those 
very lodgings at Clavering, which the peaceful Smirke had pre- 
viously tenanted, and was deep in the good graces of Madame 
Fribsby, his landlady ; and of the whole town, indeed. The 
Captain was splendid in person and raiment ; fresh-colored, 
blue-eyed, black-whiskered, broad-chested, athletic — a slight 
tendency to fulness did not take away from the comeliness of 
his jolly figure — a braver soldier never presented a broader 
chest to the enemy. As he strode down Clavering High Street, 
his hat on one side, his cane clanking on the pavement, or 
waving round him in the execution of military cuts and soldat- 
esque manoeuvres — his jolly laughter ringing through the other- 
wise silent street — he was as welcome as sunshine to the place, 
and a comfort to every inhabitant in it. 

On the first market-day he knew every pretty girl in the 
market : he joked with all the women ; had a word with the 
farmers about their stock, and dined at the Agricultural Ordi- 
nary at the Clavering Arms, where he set them all dying with 
laughter by his fun and jokes. “ Tu be sure he be a vine feller, 
tu be sure that he be,” was the universal opinion of the gentle- 
men in top-boots. He shook hands with a score of them, as 
they rode out of the inn-yard on their old nags, waving his hat 
to them splendidly as he smoked his cigar in the inn gate. In 
the course of the evening he was free of the landlady’s bar, 
knew what rent the landlord paid, how many acres he farmed, 
how much malt he put in his strong beer ; and whether he ever 
run in a little brandy unexcised by kings from Baymouth, or 
the fishing villages along the coast. 

He had tried to live at the great house first ; but it was so 
dull he couldn’t stand it. “ I am a creature born for society,” 
he told Captain Glanders. “ I’m down here to see Clavering’s 
house set in order ; for between ourselves, Frank has no energy, 
sir, no energy ; he’s not the chest for it, sir (and he threw out 
his own trunk as he spoke) ; but I must have social intercourse. 
Old Mrs. Blenkinsop goes to bed at seven, and takes Polly with 
her. There was nobody but me and the Ghost for the first two 
nights at the great house, and I own it, sir, I like company. 
Most old soldiers do.” 

Glanders asked Strong where he had served ? Captain 
Strong curled his mustache, and said with a laugh, that the 
other might almost ask where he had not served. “ I began, 


220 


PENDENNIS. 


sir, as cadet of Hungarian Uhlans, and when the war of Greek 
independence broke out, quitted that service in consequence of 
a quarrel with my governor, and was one of seven who Scaped 
from Missolonghi, and was blown up in one of Botzaris’s fire- 
ships, at the age of seventeen. I’ll show you my Cross of the 
Redeemer, if you’ll come over to my lodgings and take a glass 
of grog with me, Captain, this evening. I’ve a few of those 
baubles in my desk. I’ve the White Eagle of Poland ; Skrzy- 
necki gave it me ” (he pronounced Skrzynecki’s name with won- 
derful accuracy and gusto) “ upon the field of Ostrolenko. I 
was a lieutenant of the fourth regiment, sir, and we marched 
through Diebitsch’s lines — bang thro’ ’em into Prussia, sir, 
without firing a shot. Ah, Captain, that was a mismanaged 
business. I received this wound by the side of the King before 
Oporto — where he would have pounded the stock-jobbing 
Pedroites, had Bourmont followed my advice; and I served in 
Spain with the King’s troops, until the death of my dear friend, 
Zumalacarreguy, when I saw the game was over, and hung up 
my toasting-iron, Captain. Alava offered me a regiment; but I 
couldn’t — damme I couldn’t — and now, sir, you know Ned 
Strong — the Chevalier Strong they call me abroad — as well as 
he knows himself.” 

In this way almost everybody in Clavering came to know 
Ned Strong. He told Madame Fribsby, he told the landlord 
of the George, he told Baker at the reading-rooms, he told 
Mrs. Glanders, and the young ones, at dinner : and finally, he 
told Mr. Arthur Pendennis, who, yawning into Clavering one 
day, found the Chevalier Strong in company with Captain 
Glanders ; and who was delighted with his new acquaintance. 

Before many days were over, Captain Strong was as much 
at home in Helen’s drawing-room as he was in Madame 
Fribsby’s first floor ; and made the lonely house very gay with 
his good-humor and ceaseless flow of talk. The two women 
had never before seen such a man. He had a thousand stories 
about battles and dangers to interest them — about Greek cap- 
tives, Polish beauties, and Spanish nuns. He could sing 
scores of songs, in half-a-dozen languages, and would sit down 
to the piano and troll them off in a rich manly voice. Both 
the ladies pronounced him to be delightful — and so he was: 
though, indeed, they had not had much choice of man’s society 
as yet, having seen in the course of their lives but few persons, 
except old Portman and the Major, and Mr. Pen, who was a 
genius, to be sure ; but then your geniuses are somewhat flat 
and moody at home. 


PENDENNIS . 


22 £ 


And Captain Strong acquainted his new friends at Fair- 
oaks, not only with his own biography, but with the whole his 
tory of the family now coming to Clavering. It was he whc 
had made the marriage between his friend Frank and the widow 
Amory. She wanted rank, and he wanted money. What 
match could be more suitable ? He organized it ; he made 
those two people happy. There was no particular romantic 
attachment between them ; the widow was not of an age or a 
person for romance, and Sir Francis, if he had his game at 
billiards, and his dinner, cared for little besides. But thej 
were as happy as people could be. Clavering would return to 
his native place and country, his wife’s fortune would pay his 
encumbrances off, and his son and heir would be one of the 
first men in the county. 

“ And Miss Amory s? ” Laura asked. Laura was uncom- 
monly curious about Miss Amory. 

Strong laughed. “ Oh, Miss Amory is a muse — Miss 
Amory is a mystery — Miss Amory is a femme incomprise .” 
“ What is that ? ” asked simple Mrs. Pendennis — but the 
Chevalier gave her no answer ; perhaps could not give her one. 
“ Miss Amory paints, Miss Amory writes poems, Miss Amory 
composes music, Miss Amory rides like Diana Vernon. Miss 
Amory is a paragon, in a word.” 

“ I hate clever women,” said Pen. 

“ Thank you,” said Laura. For her part she was sure she 
should be charmed with Miss Amory, and quite longed to have 
such a friend. And with this she looked Pen full in the face, 
as if every word the little hypocrite said was Gospel truth. 

Thus an intimacy was arranged and prepared beforehand 
between the Fairoaks family and their wealthy neighbors at the 
Park ; and Pen and Laura were to the full as eager for th.eii 
arrival, as even the most curious of the Clavering folks. A 
Londoner, who sees fresh faces and yawns at them every day, 
may smile at the eagerness with which country people expect a 
visitor. A cockney comes amongst them, and is remembered 
oy his rural entertainers for years after he has left them, and 
forgotten them very likely — floated far away from them on ‘the 
vast London sea. But the islanders remember long after the 
mariner has sailed away, and can tell you what he said and 
what he wore, and how he looked and how he laughed. In 
fine, a new arrival is an event in the country not to be under- 
stood by us, who don’t and had rather not, know who lives 
next door. 

When the painters and upholsterers had done their work in 


222 


PENDENNTS . 


the house, and so beautified it, under Captain Strong’s super- 
intendence, that he might well be proud of his taste, that gen- 
tleman announced that he should go to London, where the 
whole family had arrived by this time, and should speedily 
return to establish them in their renovated mansion. 

Detachments of domestics preceded them. Carriages came 
down by sea, and were brought over from Baymouth by horses 
which had previously arrived under the care of grooms and 
coachmen. One day the “ Alacrity ” coach brought down on 
its roof two large and melancholy men, who were dropped at 
the Park lodge with their trunks, and who were Messieurs 
Frederic and James, metropolitan footmen, who had no objec- 
tion to the country, and brought with them state and other 
suits of the Clavering uniform. 

On another day, the mail deposited at the gate a foreign 
gentleman, adorned with many ringlets and chains. He made 
a great riot at the lodge-gate to the keeper’s wife (who, being 
a West country woman, did not understand his English or his 
Gascon French), because there was no carriage in waiting to 
drive him to the house, a mile off, and because he could not 
walk entire leagues in his fatigued state and varnished boots. 
This was Monsieur Alcide Mirobolant, formerly Chef of his 
Highness the Due de Borodino, of H. Eminence Cardinal 
Beccafico, and at present Chef of the bouche if Sir Clavering, 
Baronet : — Monsieur Mirobolant’s library, pictures, and piano, 
had arrived previously in charge of the intelligent young Eng- 
lishman, his aide-de-camp. He was, moreover, aided by a pro- 
fessed female cook, likewise from London, who had inferior 
females under her orders. 

He did not dine in the steward’s room, but took his nutri- 
ment in solitude in his own apartments, where a female servant 
was affected to his private use. It was a grand sight to behold 
him in his dressing-gown composing a menu. He always sat 
down and played the piano for some time before. If inter- 
rupted, he remonstrated pathetically. Every great artist, he 
said, had need of solitude to perfectionate his works. 

But we are advancing matters in the fulness of our love 
and respect for Monsieur Mirobolant, and bringing him pre- 
maturely on the stage. 

The Chevalier Strong had a hand in the engagement of all 
the London domestics, and, indeed, seemed to be the master 
of the house. There were those among them who said he was 
the house-steward, only he dined with the family. Howbeit, he 
knew how to make himself respected, and two of by no means 


PENDENNIS. 


223 


the least comfortable rooms of the house were assigned to his 
particular use. 

He was walking upon the terrace finally upon the eventful 
day, when, amidst an immense jangling of bells from Claver- 
ing Church, where the flag was flying, an open carriage and 
one of those travelling chariots or family arks, which only 
English philoprogenitiveness could invent, drove rapidly with 
foaming horses through the Park gates, and up to the steps of 
the Hall. The two battans of the sculptured door flew open. 
Two superior officers in black, the large and melancholy gen- 
tlemen, now in livery with their hair in powder, the country 
menials engaged to aid them, were in waiting in the hall, and 
bowed like tall elms when autumn winds wail in the Park. 
Through this avenue passed Sir Francis Clavering with a most 
unmoved face : Lady Clavering, with a pair of bright black 
eyes, and a good-humored countenance, which waggled and 
nodded very graciously : Master Francis Clavering, who was 
holding his mamma’s skirt (and who stopped the procession to 
look at the largest footman, whose appearance seemed to strike 
the young gentleman), and Miss Blandy, governess to Master 
Francis, and Miss Amory, her ladyship’s daughter, giving her 
arm to Captain Strong. It was summer, but fires of welcome 
were crackling in the great hall chimney, and in the rooms 
which the family Were to occupy. 

Monsieur Mirobolant had looked at the procession from 
one of the lime-trees in the avenue. “ Elle est lk,” he said, 
laying his jewelled hand on his richly-embroidered velvet waist- 
coat with glass buttons, “Je t’ai vue ; je te benis, O ma syl- 
phide, O mon ange ! ” and he dived into the thicket, and made 
his way back to his furnaces and saucepans. 

The next Sunday the same party which had just made its 
appearance at Clavering Park, came and publicly took pos- 
session of the ancient pew in the church, where so many of the 
baronet’s ancestors had prayed, and were now kneeling in effigy. 
There was such a run to see the new folks, that the Low Church 
was deserted, to the disgust of its pastor ; and as the state ba- 
rouche, with the grays and coachman in silver wig, and solemn 
footmen, drew up at the old churchyard gate, there was such a 
crowd assembled there as had not been seen for many a long 
day. Captain Strong knew everybody, and saluted for all the 
company. The country people vowed my lady was not hand- 
some, to be sure, but pronounced her to be uncommon fine 
dressed, as indeed she Was — with the finest of shawls, the finest 
of pelisses, the brilliantest of bonnets and wreaths, and a power 


224 


PENDENNIS. 


of rings, cameos, brooches, chains, bangles, and other nameless 
gimcracks ; and ribbons of every breadth and color of the rain- 
bow flaming on her person. Miss Amory appeared meek in 
dove-color, like a vestal virgin — while Master Francis was in the 
costume then prevalent of Rob Roy Macgregor, a celebrated 
Highland outlaw. The baronet was not more animated than 
ordinarily — there was a happy vacuity about him which enabled 
him to face a dinner, a death, a church, a marriage, with the 
same indifferent ease. 

A pew for the Clavering servants was filled by these 
domestics, and the enraptured congregation saw the gentlemen 
from London with “ vlower on their heeds,’’ and the miraculous 
coachman with his silver wig, take their places in that pew so 
soon as his horses were put up at the Clavering Arms. 

In the course of the service, Master Francis began to make 
such a yelling in the pew, that Frederic, the tallest of the foot- 
men, was beckoned by his master, and rose and went and carried 
out Master Francis, who roared and beat him on the head, so 
that the powder flew round about, like clouds of incense. Nor 
was he pacified until placed on the box of the carriage, where 
he played at horses with John’s whip. 

“You see the little beggar’s never been to church before, 
Miss Bell,” the baronet drawled out to a young lady who was 
visiting him ; “ no wonder he should make a row : I don’t go in 
town neither, but I think it’s right in the country to give a good 
example — and that sort of thing.” 

Miss Bell laughed and said, “ The little boy had not given 
a particularly good example.” 

“ Gad, I don’t know,” said the baronet. “ It ain’t so bad 
neither. Whenever he wants a thing, Frank always cwies, and 
whenever he cwies he gets it.” 

Here the child in question began to howl for a dish of sweet- 
meats on the luncheon table, and making a lunge across the 
table-cloth, upset a glass of wine over the best waistcoat of one 
of the guests present, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, who was greatly 
annoyed at being made to look foolish ; and at having his spot- 
less cambric shirt front blotched with wine. 

“ We do spoil him so,” said Lady Clavering to Mrs. Pen- 
dennis, fondly gazing at the cherub, whose hands and face were 
now frothed over with the species of lather which is inserted in 
the confection called meringues a la creme.- 

“ Gad I was quite wight,” said the baronet. “ He has cwied 
and he has got it, you see. Go it, Fwank, old boy.” 

“ Sir Francis is a very judicious parent,” Miss Amory whis- 


PEND ENNIS. 


225 

pered. “ Don’t you think so, Miss Bell ? I sha’n’t call you, 
Miss Bell — I shall call you Laura ; I admired you so at 
church. Your robe was not well made, nor your bonnet very 
fresh. But you have such beautiful gray eyes, and such a 
lovely tint.” 

“ Thank you,” said Miss Bell, laughing. 

“Your cousin is handsome, and thinks so. He is uneasy 
de sa personnc. He has not seen the world yet. Has he genius ? 
Has he suffered ? A lady, a little woman in a rumpled satin 
and velvet shoes — a Miss Pybus — came here, and said he has 
suffered. I, too, have suffered, — and you, Laura, has your 
heart ever been touched ? ” 

Laura said “ No ! ” but perhaps blushed a little at the idea 
or the question, so that the other said, — 

“ Ah, Laura ! I see it all. It is the beau cousin. Tell me 
everything. I already love you as a sister.” 

“You are very kind,” said Miss Bell, smiling, “and — and it 
must be owned that it is a very sudden attachment.” 

All attachments are so. It is electricity — spontaneity. It 
is instantaneous. I knew I should love you from the moment 
I saw you. Do you not feel it yourself ? ” 

“ Not yet,” said Laura ; “ but I dare say I shall if I try.” 

“ Call me by my name, then.” 

“ But I don’t know it,” Laura cried out. 

“ My name is Blanche — isn’t it a pretty name ? Call me by 
it.” 

“ Blanche — it is very pretty, indeed.” 

“ And while mamma talks with that kind-looking lady — 
what relation is she to you ? She must have been pretty once, 
but is rather passee ; she is not well gantee , but she has a pretty 
hand — and while mamma talks to her, come with me to my own 
room, — my own, own room. It’s a darling room,- though that 
horrid creature, Captain Strong, did arrange it. Are you epris 
of him ? He says you are, but I know better ; it is the beau 
cousin. Yes — il a de beaux yeux . Je n'aime pas les blonds , 
ordinaire7ne?it. Car je suis blonde moi — je suis Blanche et 
blo?ide ,” — and she looked at her face and made a moue in the 
glass ; and never stopped for Laura’s answer to the questions 
which she had put. 

Blanche was fair, and like a sylph. She had fair hair, with 
green reflections in it. But she had dark eyebrows. She had 
long black eyelashes, which veiled beautiful brown eyes. She 
had such a slim waist, that it was a wonder to behold ; and such 
slim little feet, that you would have thought the grass would 

*5 


226 


PENDENNIS . 


hardly bend under them. Her lips were of the color of faint 
rosebuds, and her voice warbled limpidly over a set of the 
sweetest little pearly teeth ever seen. She showed them very 
often, for they were very pretty. She was always smiling, and 
a smile not only showed her teeth wonderfully, but likewise 
exhibited two lovely little pink dimples, that nestled in either 
cheek. 

She showed Laura her drawings, which the other thought 
charming. She played her some of her waltzes, with a rapid and 
brilliant finger, and Laura was still more charmed. And she 
then read her some poems, in French and English, likewise of 
her own composition, and which she kept locked in her own 
book — her own dear little book ; it was bound in blue velvet, 
with a gilt lock, and on it was printed in gold the title of “ Mes 
Larmes.” 

“ Mes Larmes ! — isn’t it a pretty name ? ” the young lady 
continued, who was pleased with everything that she did, and 
did everything very well. Laura owned that it was. She had 
never seen anything like it before ; anything so lovely, so 
accomplished, so fragile and pretty ; warbling so prettily, and 
tripping about such a pretty room, with such a number of 
pretty books, pictures, flowers, round about her. The honest 
and generous country girl forgot even jealousy in her admira- 
tion. “ Indeed, Blanche,” she said, “ everything in the room 
is pretty ; and you are the prettiest of ail.” The other smiled, 
looked in the glass, went up and took both of Laura’s hands, 
and kissed them, and sat down to the piano, and shook out a 
little song. 

The intimacy between the young ladies sprang up like Jack’s 
Bean-stalk to the skies in a single night. The large footmen 
were perpetually walking with little pink notes to Fairoaks ; 
where there was a pretty housemaid in the kitchen, who might 
possibly tempt those gentlemen to so humble a place. Miss 
Amory sent music, or Miss Amory sent a new novel, or a pic- 
ture from the “ Journal des Modes,” to Laura ; or my lady’s 
compliments arrived with flowers and fruit ; or Miss Amory 
begged and prayed Miss Bell to come to dinner ; and dear Mrs. 
Pendennis, if she was strong enough ; and Mr. Arthur, if a 
humdrum party were not too stupid for him ; and would 
send a pony-carriage for Mrs. Pendennis ; and would take no 
denial. 

Neither Arthur nor Laura wished to refuse. And Helen, 
who was, indeed, somewhat ailing, was glad that the two should 
have their pleasure j and would look at them fondly as they set 


PENDENNIS . 


227 


forth, and ask in her heart that she might not be called away 
until those two beings whom she loved best in the world should 
be joined together. As they went out and crossed over the 
bridge, she remembered summer evenings five-and-twenty years 
ago, when she, too, had bloomed in her brief prime of love and 
happiness. It was all over now. The moon was looking from 
the purpling sky, and the stars glittering there, just as they used 
in the early well-remembered evenings. He was lying dead far 
away, with the billows rolling between them. Good God ! how 
well she remembered the last look of his face as they parted. 
It looked out at her through the vista of long years, as sad and 
as clear as then. 

So Mr. Pen and Miss Laura found the society at Clavering 
Park an uncommonly agreeable resort of summer evenings. 
Blanche vowed that she raffoled of Laura ; and, very likely, Mr. 
Pen was pleased with Blanche. His spirits came back ; he 
laughed and rattled till Laura wondered to hear him. It was 
not the same Pen, yawning in a shooting-jacket, in the Fair- 
oaks parlor, who appeared alert and brisk, and smiling, and 
well dressed, in Lady Clavering’s drawing-room. Sometimes 
they had music. Laura had a sweet contralto voice, and sang 
with Blanche, who had had the best continental instruction, and 
was charmed be to her friend’s mistress. Sometimes Mr. Pen 
joined in these concerts, or oftener looked sweet upon Miss 
Blanche as she sang. Sometimes they had glees, when Cap- 
tain Strong’s chest was of vast service, and he boomed out in a 
prodigious bass, of which he was not a little proud. 

“ Good fellow, Strong — ain’t he, Miss Bell ? ” Sir Francis 
would say to her. “ Plays at ecarte with Lady Clavering — 
plays anything, pitch and toss, pianoforty, cwibbage if you like. 
How long do you think he’s been staying with me ? He came 
for a week with a carpet-bag, and Gad, he’s been staying 
thwee years. Good fellow, ain’t he ? Don’t know how he 
gets a shillin’, though, by Jove I don’t, Miss Lauwa.” 

And yet the Chevalier, if he lost his money to Lady Claver- 
ing, always paid it ; and if he lived with his friend for three 
years, paid for that too — in good-humor, in kindness and 
joviality, in a thousand little services by which he made him- 
self* agreeable. What gentleman could want a better friend 
than a man who was always in spirits, never in the way or out 
of it, and was ready to execute any commission for his patron, 
whether it was to sing a song or meet a lawyer, to fight a duel, 
or to carve a capon ? 


228 


PENDENNIS. 


Although Laura and Pen commonly went to Clavering Park 
together, yet sometimes Mr. Pen took walks there unattended 
by her, and about which he did not tell her. He took to fish- 
ing the Brawl, which runs through the Park, and passes not 
very far from the garden-wall ; and by the oddest coincidence, 
Miss Amory would walk out (having been to look at her 
flowers), and would be quite surprised to see Mr. Pendennis 
fishing. 

I wonder what trout Pen caught while the young lady was 
looking on ? or whether Miss Blanche was the pretty little fish 
which played round his fly, and which Mr. Pen was endeavor- 
ing to hook ? 

As for Miss Blanche, she had a kind heart ; and having, as 
she owned, herself “ suffered ” a good deal in the course of her 
brief life and experience — why, she could compassionate other 
susceptible beings like Pen, who had suffered too. Her love 
for Laura and that dear Mrs. Pendennis redoubled : if they were 
not at the Park, she was not easy unless she herself was at 
Fairoaks. She played with Laura; she read French and Ger- 
man with Laura ; and Mr. Pen read French and German along 
with them. He turned sentimental ballads of Schiller and 
Gcethe into English verse for the ladies, and Blanche unlocked 
“ Mes Larmes ” for him, and imparted to him some of the 
plaintive outpourings of her own tender Muse. 

It appeared from these poems that the young creature had 
indeed suffered prodigiously. She was familiar with the idea 
of suicide. Death she repeatedly longed for. A faded rose 
inspired her with such grief that you have thought she must 
die in pain of it. It was a wonder how a young creature should 
have suffered so much— -should have found the means of getting 
at such an ocean of despair and passion (as a runaway boy who 
will get to sea), and having embarked on it, should survive it. 
What a talent she must have had for weeping to be able to pour 
out so many of “ Mes Larmes-! ” 

They were not particularly briny, Miss Blanche’s tears, that is 
the truth ; but Pen, who read her verses, thought them very well 
for a lady — and wrote some verses himself for her. His were 
very violent and passionate, very hot, sweet, and strong : and 
he not only wrote verses ; but — O, the villain ! O, the de- 
ceiver ! he altered and adapted former poems in his posses- 
sion, and which had been composed for a certain Miss Emily 
Fotheringay, for the use and to the Christian name of Miss 
Blanche Amory. 



MR. PEN BEGINS TO BE CONSOLED. 






PENDENNIS. 


229 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

A LITTLE INNOCENT. 

Egad, Strong,” one day the Baronet said, as the pair were 
conversing after dinner over the billiard-table, and that great 
unbosomer of secrets, a cigar ; “ Egad, Strong, I wish to the 
doose your wife was dead.” 

“So do I. That’s a cannon, by Jove! But she won’t; 
she’ll live forever — you see if she don’t. Why do you wish her 
off the hooks, Frank, my boy ? ” asked Captain Strong. 

“ Because then you might marry Missy. She ain’t bad- 
looking. She’ll have ten thousand, and that’s a good bit of 
money for such a poor old devil as you,” drawled out the other 
gentleman. “ And egad, Strong, I hate her worse and worse 
every day. “ I can’t stand her, Strong ; by gad, I can’t.” 

“ I wouldn’t take her at twice the figure,” Captain Strong 
said, laughing. “ I never saw such a little devil in my life.” 

“ I should like to poison her,” said the sententious Baro- 
net; “by Jove I should.” 

“ Why, what has she been at now ? ” asked his friend. 

“ Nothing particular,” answered Sir Francis ; “ only her old 
tricks. That girl has such a knack of making everybody mis- 
erable that, hang me, its quite surprising. Last night she sent 
the governess crying away from the dinner-table. Afterwards, 
as I was passing Frank’s room, I heard the poor little beggar 
howling in the dark, and found his sister had been frightening 
his soul out of his body, by telling him stories about the ghost 
that’s in the house. At lunch she gave my lady a turn ; and 
though my wife’s a fool she’s a good soul — I’m hanged if she 
ain’t” 

“ What did Missy do to her ? ” Strong asked. 

“ Why, hang me, if she didn’t begin talking about the late 
Amory, my predecessor,” the Baronet said, with a grin. “ She 
got some picture out of ‘ the Keepsake,’ and said, she was sure 
it was like her dear father. She wanted to know where her 
father’s grave was. Hang her father ! Whenever Miss Amory 
talks about him, Lady Clavering always bursts out crying : and 
the little devil will talk about him in order to spite her mother. 
To-day when she began, I got in a confounded rage, said I was 
her father, and — and that sort of thing, and then, sir, she took 
a shy at me.” 


230 


PENDENNJS. 


“ And what did she say about you, Frank ? ” Mr. Strong, 
still laughing, inquired of his friend and patron. 

“ Gad, she said I wasn’t her father ; that I wasn’t fit to 
comprehend her ; that her father must have been a man of 
genius, and fine feelings, and that sort of thing ; whereas I had 
married her mother for money.” 

“ Well, didn’t you ? ” asked Strong. 

“ It don’t make it any the pleasanter to hear because it’s 
true, don’t you know,” Sir Francis Clavering answered. “ I 
ain’t a literary man and that ; but I ain’t such a fool as she 
makes me out. I don’t know how it is, but she always 
manages to — to put me in the hole, don’t you understand. 
She turns all the house round her in her quiet way, and 
with her confounded sentimental airs. I wish she was dead, 
Ned.” 

“ It was my wife whom you wanted dead just now,” Strong 
said, always in perfect good-humor ; upon which the Baronet, 
with his accustomed candor, said, “Well, when people bore 
my life out, I do wish they were dead, and I wish Missy were 
down a well with all my heart.” 

Thus it will be seen from the above report of this candid 
conversation that our accomplished little friend had some 
peculiarities or defects of character which rendered her not 
very popular. She was a young lady of some genius, exquisite 
sympathies and considerable literary attainments, living, like 
many an other genius, with relatives who could not comprehend 
her. Neither her mother nor her step-father were persons of a 
literary turn. “ Bell’s Life ” and the “ Racing Calendar ” were 
the extent of the Baronet’s reading, and Lady Clavering still 
wrote like a school-girl of thirteen, and \^ith an extraordinary 
disregard to grammar and spelling. And as Miss Amory felt 
very keenly that she was not appreciated, and that she lived 
with persons who were not her equals in intellect or conver- 
sational power, she lost no opportunity to acquaint her family 
circle with their inferiority to herself, and not only was a martyr, 
but took care to let everybody know that she was so. If she 
suffered, as she said and thought she did, severely, are we to 
wonder that a young creature of such delicate sensibilities 
should shriek and cry out a good deal ? If a poetess may not 
bemoan her lot, of what earthly use is her lyre ? Blanche struck 
hers only to the saddest of tunes ; and sang elegies over her 
dead hopes, dirges over her early frost-nipt buds of affection, as 
became such a melancholy fate and Muse. 

Her actual distresses, as we have said, had not been up to 


PENDENNIS. 


231 

the present time very considerable : but her griefs lay, like 
those of most of us, in her own soul — that being sad and 
habitually dissatisfied, what wonder that she should weep ? So 
“ Mes Larmes ” dribbled out of her eyes any day at command : 
she could furnish an unlimited supply of tears, and her faculty 
of shedding them increased by practice. For sentiment is like 
another complaint mentioned by Horace, as increasing by self- 
indulgence (I am sorry to say, ladies, that the complaint in 
question is called the dropsy), and the more you cry, the more 
you will be able and desirous to do so. 

Missy had begun to gush at a very early age. Lamartine 
was her favorite bard from the period when she first could feel ; 
and she had subsequently improved her mind by a sedulous 
study of novels of the great modern authors of the French 
language. There was not a romance of Balzac and George 
Sand which the indefatigable little creature had not devoured 
by the time she was sixteen : and, however little she sympathized 
with her relatives at home, she had friends, as she said, in the 
spirit-world, meaning the tender Indiana, the passionate and 
poetic Lelia, the amiable Trenmor, that high-souled convict, 
that angel of the galleys, — the fiery Stenio, — and the other 
numberless heroes of the French romances. She had been in 
love with Prince Rodolph and Prince Djalma while she was yet 
at school, and had settled the divorce question, and the rights 
of woman, with Indiana, before she had left off pinafores. The 
impetuous little lady played at love with these imaginary 
worthies, as a little while before she had played at maternity 
with her doll. Pretty little poetical spirits ! it is curious to 
watch them with those playthings. To-day the blue-eyed one 
is the favorite, and the black-eyed one is pushed behind the 
drawers. To-morrow blue-eyes may take its turn of neglect : 
and it may be an odious little wretch with a burnt nose, or 
torn head of hair, and no eyes at all, that takes the first place 
in Miss’s affection, and is dandled and caressed in her arms. 

As novelists are supposed to know everything, even the 
secrets of female hearts, which the owners themselves do not 
perhaps know, we may state that at eleven years of age Made- 
moiselle Betsi, as Miss Amory was then called, had felt tender 
emotions towards a young Savoyard organ-grinder at Paris, 
whom she persisted in believing to be a prince carried off from 
his parents ; that at twelve an old and hideous drawing-master 
— (but, ah, what age or personal defects are proof against 
woman’s love ?) had agitated her young heart ; and that, at 
thirteen, being at Madame de Carmel’s boarding-school, in the 


232 


PENDENNIS . 


Champs Elysees. which, as everybody knows, is next door to 
Monsieur Rogron’s (Chevalier of the Legion of Honor) pension 
for yofmg gentlemen, a correspondence by letter took place be- 
tween the seduisante Miss Betsi and two young gentlemen of the 
College of Charlemagne, who were pensioners of the Chevalier 
Rogron. 

In the above paragraph our young friend has been called 
by a Christian name, different to that under which we were 
lately presented to her. The fact is, that Miss Amory, called 
Missy at home, had really at the first been christened Betsy — 
but assumed the name of Blanche of her own will and fantasy, 
and crowned herself with it ; and the weapon which the Baronet, 
her step-father, held in terror over her, was the threat to call 
her publicly by her name of Betsy, by which menace he some- 
times managed to keep the young rebel in order. 

Blanche had had hosts of dear, dear, darling, friends ere 
now, and had quite a little museum of locks of hair in her 
treasure-chests, which she had gathered in the course of her sen- 
timental progress. Some dear friends had married : some had 
gone to other schools : one beloved sister she had lost from the 
pension, and found again, O, horror ! her darling, her Ldocadie, 
keeping the books in her father’s shop, a grocer in the Rue du 
Bac : in fact, she had met with a number of disappointments, es- 
trangements, disillusionments, as she called them in her pretty 
French jargon, and had seen and suffered a great deal for so 
young a woman. But it is the lot of sensibility to suffer, and of 
confiding tenderness to be deceived, and she felt that she was 
only undergoing the penalties of genius in these pangs and 
disappointments of her young career. 

Meanwhile, she managed to make the honest lady, her 
mother, as uncomfortable as circumstances would permit ; and 
caused her worthy step-father to wish she was dead. With the 
exception of Captain Strong, whose invincible good-humor was 
proof against her sarcasms, the little lady ruled the whole house 
with her' tongue. If Lady Clavering talked about Sparrowgrass 
instead of Asparagus, or called an object a hobject, as this un- 
fortunate lady would sometimes do, Missy calmly corrected her, 
and frightened the good soul, her mother, into errors only the 
more frequent as she grew more nervous under her daughter’s 
eye. 

It is not to be supposed, considering the vast interest which 
the arrival of the family at Clavering Park inspired in the in- 
habitants of the little town, that Madame Fribsby alone, of all 


PENDENNIS. 


*33 

the folks in Clavering, should have remained unmoved and in- 
curious. At the first appearance of the Park family in church, 
Madame noted every article of toilette which the ladies wore, 
from their bonnets to their brodequins, and took a survey of 
the attire of the ladies’ maids in the pew allotted to them. We 
fear that Doctor Portman’s sermon, though it was one of his 
oldest and most valued compositions, had little effect upon 
Madame Fribsby on that day. In a very few days afterwards, 
she had managed for herself an interview with Lady Clavering’s 
confidential attendant, in the housekeeper’s room at the Park ; 
and her cards in French and English, stating that she received 
the newest fashions from Paris from her correspondent Madame 
Victorine, and that she was in the custom of making court and 
ball dresses for the nobility and gentry of the shire, were in the 
possession of Lady Clavering and Miss Amorv, and favorably 
received, as she was happy to hear, by those ladies. 

Mrs. Bonner, Lady Clavering’s lady, became soon a great 
frequenter of Madame Fribsby’s drawing-room, and partook of 
many entertainments at the milliner’s expense. A meal of green 
tea, scandal, hot Sally-Lunn cakes, and a little novel reading, 
were always at the service of Mrs. Bonner, whenever she was 
free to pass an evening in the town. And she. found much 
more time for these pleasures than her junior officer, Miss 
Amory’s maid, who seldom could be spared for a holiday, and 
was worked as hard as any factory girl by that inexorable little 
Muse, her mistress. 

And there was another person connected with the Clavering 
establishment, who became a constant guest of our friend, the 
milliner. This was the chief of the kitchen, Monsieur Mirobo- 
lant, with whom Madame Fribsby soon formed an intimacy. 

Not having been accustomed to the appearance or society 
of persons of the French nation, the rustic inhabitants of Cla- 
vering were not so favorably impressed by Monsieur Alcide’s 
manners and appearance, as that gentleman might have desired 
that they should be. He walked among them quite unsuspici- 
ously upon the afternoon of a summer day, when his services 
were not required at the House, in his usual favorite costume, 
namely, his light green frock or paletot, his crimson velvet 
waistcoat, with blue glass buttons, his pantalon Ecossais, of a 
very large and decided check pattern, his orange satin neck- 
cloth, and his jean-boots, with tips of shiny leather, — these, with 
a gold embroidered cap, and a richly-gilt cane, or other varieties 
of ornament of a similar tendency, formed his usual holiday 
costume, in which he flattered himself there was nothing re- 


PEXDENMS. 


234 

markable (unless, indeed, the beauty of his person should attract 
observation), and in which he considered that he exhibited the 
appearance of a gentleman of good Parisian ton. 

He walked then down the street, grinning and ogling every 
woman he met with glances, which he meant should kill them 
outright, and peered over the railings, and in at the windows, 
where females were, in the tranquil summer evening. But 
Betsy, Mrs. Pybus’s maid, shrank back with a “ Lor bless us ! ” 
as Alcide ogled her over the laurel bush ; the Miss Bakers, and 
their mamma, stared with wonder ; and presently a crowd began 
to follow the interesting foreigner, of ragged urchins and chil- 
dren, who left their dirt-pies in the street to pursue him. 

For some time he thought that admiration was the cause 
which led these persons in his wake, and walked on, pleased 
himself that lie could so easily confer on others so much harm- 
less pleasure. But the little children and dirt-pie manufactur- 
ers were presently succeeded by flowers of a larger growth, and 
a number of lads and girls from the factory being let loose at 
this hour, joined the mob, and began laughing, jeering, hooting, 
and calling opprobrious names at the Frenchman. Some cried 
out, “Frenchy! Frenchy!” some exclaimed “Frogs!” one 
asked for a lock of his hair, which was long and in richly-flow- 
ing ringlets ; and at length the poor artist began to perceive 
that he was an object of derision rather than of respect to the 
rude grinning mob. 

It was at this juncture that Madame Fribsby spied the un- 
lucky gentleman with the train at his heels, and heard the 
scornful shouts with which they assailed him. She ran out of 
her room, and across the street to the persecuted foreigner ; 
•she. held out her hand, and, addressing him in his own language, 
invited him into her abode ; and when she had housed him fair- 
ly within her door, she stood bravely at the threshold before 
the gibing factory girls and boys, and said they were a pack of 
cowards to insult a poor man who could not speak their lan- 
guage, and was alone and without protection. The little crowd, 
with some ironical cheers and hootings, nevertheless felt the 
force of Madame Fribsby’s vigorous allocution, and retreated 
before her ; for the old lady was rather respected in the place, 
and her oddity and her kindness had made her many friends 
there. 

Poor Mirobolant was grateful indeed to hear the language 
of his country ever so ill spoken. Frenchmen pardon our 
faults in their language much more readily than we excuse their 
bad English ; and will face our blunders throughout a long conver- 


PENDENNIS . 


2 35 

sation, without the least propensity to grin. The rescued artist 
vowed that Madame Fribsby was his guardian angel, and that 
he had not as yet met with such suavity and politeness among 
les Anglais es. He was as courteous and complimentary to her 
as if it was the fairest and noblest of ladies whom he was ad- 
dressing : for Alcide Mirobolant paid homage after his fashion 
to all womankind, and never dreamed of a distinction of ranks 
in the realms of beauty, as his phrase was. 

A cream, flavored with pine-apple — a mayonnaise of lobster, 
which he flattered himself was not unworthy of his hand, or of 
her to w r hom he had the honor to offer it as an homage, and a 
box of preserv ed fruits of Provence, were brought by one of the 
chiefs aides-de-camp, in a basket, the next day to the milliner’s, 
and were accompanied with a gallant note to the amiable 
Madame Fribsby. “ Her kindness,” Alcides said, “ had made 
a green place in the desert of his existence, — her suavity would 
ever contrast in memory with the grossierete of the rustic popu- 
lation, who w r ere not worthy to possess such a jewel.” An 
intimacy of the most confidential nature thus sprang up between 
the milliner and the chief of the kitchen ; but I do not know 
whether it w r as with pleasure or mortification that Madame 
received the declarations of friendship which the young Alcides 
proffered to her, for he persisted in calling her, 44 La respectable 
FribsbiP 44 La vertueuse Fribsbip — and in stating that he should 
consider her as his mother, while he hoped she would regard 
him as her son. Ah ! it was not very long ago, Fribsby thought, 
that words had been addressed to her in that dear French lan- 
guage, indicating a different sort of attachment. And she 
sighed as she looked up at the picture of her Carabineer. For 
it is surprising how r young some people’s hearts remain when 
their heads have need of a front or a little hair-dye, — and at 
this moment, Madame Fribsby, as she told young Alcides, felt 
as romantic as a girl of eighteen. 

When the conversation took this turn — and at their first 
intimacy Madame Fribsby w as rather inclined so to lead it — 
Alcide alw r ays politely diverged to another subject : it was as 
his mother that he persisted in considering the good milliner. 
He would recognize her in no other capacity, and with that 
relationship the gentle lady was forced to content herself, 
when she found how deeply the artist’s heart was engaged 
elsewhere. 

He was not long before he described to her the subject and 
origin of his passion. 

44 1 declared myself to her,” said Alcide, laying his hand on 


PENDENNIS. 


236 

his heart, “ in a manner which was as novel as I am charmed 
to think it was agreeable. Where cannot Love penetrate, 
respectable Madame Fribsbi ? Cupid is the father of inven- 
tion ! — I inquired of the domestics what were the plats of which 
Mademoiselle partook with most pleasure ; and built up my 
little battery accordingly. On a day when her parents had 
gone to dine in the world (and I am grieved to say that a gros- 
sier dinner at a restaurant, on the Boulevard, or in the Palais 
Royal, seemed to form the delights of these unrefined persons), 
the charming Miss entertained some comrades of the pension ; 
and I advised myself to send up a little repast suitable to so 
delicate young palates. Her lovely name is Blanche. The 
veil of the maiden is white ; the w reath of roses which she 
wears is white. I determined that my dinner should be as 
spotless as the snow. At her accustomed hour, and instead of 
the rude gigot d feau winch was ordinarily served at her too 
simple table, I sent her up a little potage a la Reine — a. la Reins 
Blajiche I called it, — as w T hite as her own tint — and confectioned 
with the most fragrant cream and almonds. I then offered up 
at her shrine a filet de merlan a f Agnes , and a delicate plat, 
which I have designated as Eperlan a la Sainte Therese , and of 
w’hich my charming Miss partook with pleasure. I followed 
this by two little entrees of sw T eetbread and chicken ; and the 
only brown thing which I permitted myself in the entertain- 
ment was a little roast of lamb, which I laid in a meadow of 
spinaches, surrounded with croustillons, representing sheep, 
and ornamented with daisies and other savage flowers. After 
this came my second service : a pudding d la Reine Elizabeth 
(who, Madame Fribsbi knows, was a maiden princess) ; a dish 
of opal-colored plovers’ eggs, which I called Nid de tourtereaux 
a la Roucoule; placing in the midst of them two of those tender 
volatiles, billing each other, and confectioned with butter ; a 
basket containing little gateaux of apricots, which, I know, all 
young ladies adore ; and a jelly of marasquin, bland, insinua- 
ting, insinuating, intoxicating as the glance of beauty. This I 
designated Ambroisie de Calypso a la Souveraine de mon Coeur. 
And wLen the ice was brought in — an ice of plombiZre and 
cherries — how do you think I had shaped them, Madame 
Fribsbi? In the form of two hearts united with an arrow, on 
which I had laid, before it entered, a bridal veil in cut-paper, 
surmounted by a wTeath of virginal orange-flowers. I stood at 
the door to watch the effect of this entry. It was but one cry 
of admiration. The three young ladies filled their glasses with 
the sparkling Ay, and carried me in a toast. I heard it — I 


PENDENNTS. 


2 37 


heard Miss speak of me — I heard her say, 4 Tell Monsieur 
Mirobolant that we thank him — we admire him — we love him ! ’ 
My feet almostjailed me as I spoke. 

“ Since that, can I have any reason to doubt that the young 
artist has made some progress in the heart of the English 
Miss ? I am modest, but my glass informs me that I am not 
ill-looking. Other victories have convinced me of the fact.” 

“ Dangerous man ! ” cried the milliner. 

44 The blonde misses of Albion see nothing in the dull 
inhabitants of their brumous isle, which can compare with the 
1 ardour and vivacity of the children of the South. We bring 
our sunshine with us ; we are Frenchmen, and accustomed to 
conquer. Were it not for this affair of the heart, and my deter- 
mination to marry an Anglaise, do you think I would stop in 
this island (which is not altogether ungrateful, since I have 
found here a tender mother in the respectable Madame Fribsbi), 
in this island, in this family ? My genius would use itself in 
the company of these rustics — the poesy of my art cannot be 
understood by these carniverous insularies. No — the men are 
odious, but the women — the women ! I own, dear Fribsbi, are 
seducing ! I have vowed to marry one ; and as I cannot go 
into your markets and purchase, according to the custom of 
the country, I am resolved to adopt another custom, and fly 
with one to Gretna Grin. The blonde Miss will go. She is 
fascinated. Her eyes have told me so. The white dove wants 
but the signal to fly.” 

44 Have you any correspondence with her? ” asked Fribsby, 
in amazement, and not knowing whether the young lady or the 
lover might be laboring under a romantic delusion. 

44 1 correspond with her by means of my art. She partakes 
of dishes which I make expressly for her. I insinuate to her 
thus a thousand hints, which, as she is perfectly spiritual, she 
receives. But I want other intelligences near her.” 

“ There is Pincott, her maid.” said Madame Fribsby, who. 
by aptitude or education, seemed to have some knowledge of 
affairs of the heart, but the great artist's brow darkened at this 
suggestion. 

“Madame,” he said, there are points upon which a gallant 
man ought to silence himself ; though, if he break the secret, 
he may do so with the least impropriety to his best friend — his 
adopted mother. Know then, that there is a cause why Miss 
Pincott should be hostile to me — a cause not uncommon with 
your sex — jealousy.” 

u Perfidious monster ! ” said the confidante. 


PEN'DENN’IS. 


238 


“ Ah, no,” said the artist, with a deep bass voice, and a 
tragic accent worthy of the Porte St. Martin and his favorite 
melo-drames, “Not perfidious, but fatal. Yes, I am a fatal 
man, Madame Fribsbi, To inspire hopeless passion is my 
destiny. I cannot help it that women love me. Is it my fault 
that that young woman deperishes and languishes to the view 
of the eye, consumed by a flame which I cannot return ? Listen ! 
There are others in this family who are similarly unhappy. 
The governess of the young Milor has encountered me in my 
walks, and looked at me in a way which can bear but one inter- 
pretation. And Milady herself, who is of mature age, but who 
has oriental blood, has once or twice addressed compliments to 
the lonely artist which can admit of no mistake. I avoid the 
household, I seek solitude, I undergo my destiny. I can marry 
but one, and am resolved it shall be to a lady of your nation. 
And, if her fortune is sufficient, I think Miss would be the per- 
son who would be most suitable. I wish to ascertain what her 
means are before I lead her to Gretna Grin.” 

Whether Alcide was as irresistible a conqueror as his name- 
sake, or whether he was simply crazy, is a point which must be 
left to the reader’s judgment. But the latter, if he has had the 
benefit of much French acquaintance, has perhaps met with 
men amongst them who fancied themselves almost as invincible ; 
and who, if you credit them, have made equal havoc in the 
hearts of les Anglaises . 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

CONTAINS BOTH LOVE AND JEALOUSY. 

Our readers have already heard Sir Fancis Clavering’s 
candid opinion of the lady who had given him her fortune and 
restored him to his native country and home, and it must be 
owned that the Baronet was not far wrong in his estimate of his 
wife, and that Lady Clavering was not the wisest or the best 
educated of women. She had had a couple of years’ education 
in Europe in a suburb of London, which she persisted in call- 
ing Ackney to her dying day, whence she had been summoned 
to join her father at Calcutta at the age of fifteen. And it was 
on her voyage thither, on board the kamchunder East India- 


PE JVD ENNIS. 


2 39 


man, Captain Bragg, in which ship she had two years previously 
made her journey to Europe, that she formed the acquaintance 
of her first husband, Mr. Amory, who was third mate of the 
vessel in question. 

We are not going to enter into the early part of Lady Clav- 
ering’s history, but Captain Bragg, under whose charge Miss 
Snell went out to her: father, who was one of the Captain’s con- 
signees, and part owner of the Ramchunder and many other 
vessels, found reason to put the rebellious rascal of a mate in 
irons, until they reached the Cape, where the captain left the 
officer behind : and finally delivered his ward to her father at 
Calcutta, after a stormy and perilous voyage in which the Ram- 
chunder and the cargo and passengers incurred no small danger 
and damage. 

Some months afterwards Amory made his appearance at 
Calcutta, having worked his way out before the mast from the 
Cape — married the rich Attorney’s daughter in spite of that old 
speculator — set up as indigo planter and failed — set up as 
agent and failed again — set up as editor of the “ Sunderbund 
Pilot ” and failed again— quarrelling ceaselessly with his father- 
in-law and his wife during the progress of all these mercantile 
transactions and disasters, and ending his career finally with a 
crash which compelled him to leave Calcutta and go to New 
South Wales. It was in the course of these luckless proceedings, 
that Mr. Amory probably made the acquaintance of Sir Jasper 
Rogers, the respected Judge of the Supreme Court of Calcutta, 
who has been mentioned before : and, as the. truth must out, it 
was by making an improper use of his father-in-law’s name, who 
could write perfectly well, and had no need of an amanuensis, 
that fortune finally forsook Mr. Amory and caused him to 
abandon all further struggles with her. 

Not being in the habit of reading the Calcutta law-reports 
very assiduously, the European public did not know of these 
facts as well as people did in Bengal, and Mrs. Amory and her 
father, finding her residence in India not a comfortable one, it 
was agreed that the lady should return to Europe, whither she 
came with her little daughter Betsy or Blanche, then four years 
old. They were accompanied by Betsy’s nurse, who has been 
presented to the reader in the last chapter as the confidential 
maid of Lady Clavering, Mrs. Bonner : and Captain Bragg took 
a house for them in the near neighborhood of his residence in 
Pocklington Street. 

It was a very hard bitter summer, and the rain it rained 
every day for some time after Mrs. Amory’s arrival. Bragg 
was very pompous and disagreeable, perhaps ashamed, perhaps 


PENDENNIS. 


240 

anxious, to get rid of the Indian lady. She believed that ali 
the world in London was talking about her husband’s disaster, 
and that the King and Queen and the Court of Directors were 
aware of her unlucky history. She had a good allowance from 
her father ; she had no call to live in England ; and she deter- 
mined to go abroad. Away she went, then, glad to escape the 
gloomy surveillance of the odious bully, Captain Bragg. People 
had no objection to receive her at the continental town where 
she stopped, and at the various boarding-houses, where she 
royally paid her way. She called Hackney Ackney, to be sure 
(though otherwise she spoke English with a little foreign twang, 
very curious and not unpleasant) ; she dressed amazingly ; she 
was conspicuous for her love of eating and drinking, and pre- 
pared curries and pillaus at every boarding-house which she 
frequented ; but her singularities of language and behavior 
only gave a zest to her society, and Mrs. Amory was de- 
servedly popular. She was the most good-natured, jovial, and 
generous of women. She was up to any party of pleasure by 
whomsoever proposed. She brought three times more cham- 
pagne and fowls and ham to the picnics than anyone else. She 
took endless boxes for the play, and tickets for the masked 
balls, and gave them away to everybody. She paid the board- 
ing-house people months beforehand ; she helped poor shabby 
mustached bucks and dowagers, whose remittances had not 
arrived, with constant supplies from her purse ; and in this way 
she tramped through Europe, and appeared at Brussels, at 
Paris, at Milan, at Naples, at Rome, as her fancy led her. 
News of Amory’s death reached her at the latter place, where 
Captain Clavering was then staying, unable to pay his hotel 
bill, as, indeed, was his friend, Chevalier Strong, and the 
good-natured widow married the descendant of the ancient 
house of Clavering — professing, indeed, no particular grief for 
the scapegrace of a husband whom she had lost : and thus we 
have brought her up to the present time when she was mistress 
of Clavering Park. 

Missy followed her mamma in most of her peregrinations, 
and so. learned a deal of life. She had a governess for some 
time; and after her mother’s second marriage, the benefit of 
Madame de Caramel’s select pension in the Champs Elysees. 
When the Claverings came to England, she of course "came 
with them. It was only within a few years, after the death of 
her grandfather, and the birth of her. little brother, that she be- 
gan to understand that her position in life was altered, and that 
Miss Amory, nobody’s daughter, was a very small personage in 


PENDENN1S. 


2 4 t 


a house compared with Master Francis Clavering, heir to an 
ancient baronetcy, and a noble estate. But for little Frank, 
she would have been an heiress, in spite of her father : and 
though she knew and cared not much about money, of which 
she never had any stint, and though she was a romantic little 
Muse, as we have seen, yet she could not reasonably be grateful 
to the persons who had so contributed to change her condition : 
nor, indeed, did she understand what the matter really was, 
until she had made some further progress, and acquired more 
accurate knowledge in the world. 

But this was clear, that her step-father was dull and weak : 
that mamma dropped h^r H’s, and was not refined in manners 
or appearance ; and that little Frank was a spoiled quarrelsome 
urchin, always having his way, always treading upon her feet, 
always upsetting his dinner on her dresses, and keeping her out 
of her inheritance. None of these, as she felt, could compre- 
hend her : and her solitary heart naturally pined for other 
attachments, and she sought around her where to bestow the 
precious boon of her unoccupied affection. 

This dear girl, then, from want of sympathy, or other cause, 
made herself so disagreeable at home, and frightened her 
mother, and bored her step-father so much, that they were quite 
as anxious as she could be that she should settle for herself in 
life ; and hence Sir Francis Clavering’s desire expressed to his 
friend, in the last chapter, that Mrs. Strong should die, and 
that he would take Blanche to himself as a second Mrs. Strong. 

But as this could not be, any other person was welcome to 
win her : and a smart young fellow, well-looking and well- 
educated, like our friend Arthur Pendennis, was quite free to 
propose for her if he had a mind, and would have been received 
with open arms by Lady Clavering as a son-in-law, had he had 
the courage to come forward as a competitor for Miss Amory’s 
hand. 

Mr. Pen, however, besides other drawbacks, chose to en- 
tertain an extreme diffidence about himself. He was ashamed 
of his late failures, of his idle and nameless condition, of the 
poverty which he had brought on his mother by his folly, and 
there was as much of vanity as remorse in his present state of 
doubt and distrust. How could he ever hope for such a prize 
as this brilliant Blanche Amory, who lived in a fine park and 
mansion, and was waited on by a score of grand domestics, 
whilst a maid-servant brought in their meagre meal at Fairoaks, 
and his mother was obliged to pinch and manage to make both 
ends meet ? Obstacles seemed to him insurmountable, which 

16 


242 


PENDENNIS. 


would have vanished had he marched manfully upon them : 
and he preferred despairing, or dallying with his wishes, — or 
perhaps he had not positively shaped them as yet, — to attempt- 
ing to win gallantly the object of his desire. Many a young 
man fails by that species of vanity called shyness, who might, 
for the asking, have his will. 

But we clo not pretend to- say that Pen had, as yet, ascer- 
tained his : or that he was doing much more than thinking, 
about falling in love. Miss Amory was charming and lively. 
She fascinated and cajoled him by a thousand arts or natural 
graces or flatteries. But there were lurking reasons and doubts, 
besides shyness and vanity, withholding him. In spite of her 
cleverness, and her protestations, and her fascinations, Pen’s 
mother had divined the girl, and did not trust her. Mrs. 
Pendennis saw Blanche lightminded and frivolous, detected 
many wants in her which offended the pure and pious-minded 
lady ; a want of reverence for her parents, and for things more 
sacred, Helen thought : worldliness and selfishness couched 
under pretty words and tender expressions. Laura and Pen 
battled these points strongly at first with the widow — Laura 
being as yet enthusiastic about her new friend, and Pen not 
far-gone enough in love to attempt any concealment of his 
feelings. He would laugh at these objections of Helen’s, and 
say, “ Psha, mother ! you are jealous about Laura — all women 
are jealous.” 

But when, in the course of a month or two, and by watching 
the pair with that anxiety with which brooding women watch 
over their son’s affections — and in acknowledging which, I 
have no doubt there is a sexual jealousy on the mother’s part, 
and a secret pang — when Helen saw that the intimacy appeared 
to make progress, that the two young people were perpetually 
finding pretexts to meet, and that Miss Blanche was at Fair- 
oaks or Mr. Pen at the Park every day, the poor widow’s heart 
began to fail her — her darling project seemed to vanish before 
her ; and, giving way to her weakness, she fairly told Pen one 
day what her views and longings were ; that she felt herself 
breaking, and not long for this world, and that she hoped and 
prayed before she went, that she might see her two children 
one. The late events, Pen’s life and career and former passion 
for the actress, had broken the spirit of this tender lady. She 
felt that he had escaped her, and was in the maternal nest no 
more ; and she clung with a sickening fondness to Laura, 
Laura who had been left to her by Francis in Heaven. 

Pen kissed and soothed her in his grand patronizing way. 


PEtfDEtfNTS. 


243 

He had seen something of this, he had long thought his mother 
wanted to make this marriage — did Laura know anything of it ? 
(Not she — Mrs. Pendennis said — not for worlds would she 
have breathed a word of it to Laura) — “ Well, well, there was 
time enough, his mother wouldn’t die,” Pen said, laughingly : 
“he wouldn’t hear of any such thing, and as for the Muse, she 
is too grand a lady to think about poor little me — and as for 
Laura, who knows that she would have me? She would do 
anything you told her, to be sure. But am I worthy of her ? ” 

“ O, Pen, you might be,” was the widow’s reply ; not that 
Mr. Pen ever doubted that he was ; and a feeling of indefinable 
pleasure and self-complacency came over him as he thought 
over this proposal, and imaged Laura to himself, as his memory 
remembered her for years past, always fair and open, kindly 
and pious, cheerful, tender, and true. He looked at her with 
brightening eyes as she came in from the garden at the end of 
this talk, her cheeks rather flushed, her looks frank and smiling 
— a basket of roses in her hand. 

She took the finest of them and brought it to Mrs. Pen- 
dennis, who was refreshed by the odor and color of these flowers ; 
and hung over her fondly and gave it to her. 

“ And I might have this prize for the asking ! ” Pen thought 
with a thrill of triumph, as he looked at the kindly girl. “Why, 
she is as beautiful and as generous as her roses.” The image of 
the two women remained forever after in his mind, and he never, 
recalled it but the tears came into his eyes. 

Before very many weeks’ intimacy with her new acquaintance, 
however, Miss Laura was obliged to give in. to Helen’s opinion, 
and own that the Muse was selfish, unkind, and inconstant. 

Little Frank, for instance, might be very provoking, and 
might have deprived Blanche of her mamma’s affection, but this 
was no reason why Blanche should box the child’s ears because 
he upset a glass of water over her drawing, and why she should 
call him many opprobrious names in the English and French 
language ; and the preference accorded to little Frank was cer- 
tainly no reason why Blanche should give herself imperial airs of 
command towards the boy’s governess, and send that young lady 
upon messages through the house to bring her book or to fetch 
her pocket-handkerchief. When a domestic performed an errand 
for honest Laura, she was always thankful and pleased ; where- 
as she could not but perceive that the little Muse had not the 
slightest scruple in giving her commands to all the world round 
about her, and in disturbing anybody’s ease or comfort, in order 
to administer to her own. It was Laura’s first experience in 


244 


PENDENN1S. 


friendship ; and it pained the kind creature's heart to be obliged 
to give up as delusions, one by one, those charms and brilliant 
qualities in which her fancy had dressed her new friend, and to 
find that the fascinating little fairy was but a mortal, and not a 
very amiable mortal after all. What generous person is there 
that has not been so deceived in his time ? — what person, per- 
haps, that has not so disappointed others in his turn ? 

After the scene with little Frank, in which that refractory 
son and heir of the house of Clavering had received the com- 
pliments in French and English, and the accompanying box on 
the ear from his sister, Miss Laura, who had plenty of humor, 
could not help calling to mind some very touching and tender 
verses which the Muse had read to her out of Mes Larmes, and 
which began, “ My pretty baby brother, may angels guard thy 
rest,” in which the Muse, after complimenting the baby upon 
the station in life which it was about to occupy, and contrasting 
it with her own lonely condition, vowed nevertheless that the 
angel boy would never enjoy such affection as hers was, or find 
in the false world before him anything so constant and tender 
as a sister's heart. “ It may be,” the forlorn one said, “ it may 
be, you will slight it, my pretty baby sweet, You will spurn me 
from your bosom, I’ll cling around your feet ! O let me, let 
me, love you ! the world will prove to you As false as 'tis to 
others, but I am ever true.” And behold the Muse was boxing 
the darling brother’s ears instead of kneeling at his feet, and 
giving Miss Laura her first lesson in the Cynical philosophy — 
not quite her first, however, — something like this selfishness 
and waywardness, something like this contrast between prac- 
tice and poetry, between grand versified aspirations and every- 
day life, she had witnessed at home in the person of our young 
friend Mr. Pen. 

But then Pen was different. Pen was a man. It seemed 
natural somehow, that he should be self-willed and should have his 
own way. And under his waywardness and selfishness, indeed, 
there was a kind and generous heart. O it was hard that such 
a diamond should be changed away against such a false stone 
as this. In a word, Laura began to be tired of her admirable 
Blanche. She had assayed her and found her not true ; and her 
former admiration and delight, which she had expressed with her 
accustomed generous artlessness, gave way to a feeling, which we 
shall not call contempt, but which was very near it ; and which 
caused Laura to adopt towards Miss Amory a grave and tran- 
quil tone of superiority, which was at first by no means to the 
Muse’s liking. Nobody likes to be found out, or, having held 
a high place, to submit to step down. 


PEA 7 DENNIS. 


2 4 $ 

The consciousness that this event was impending did not 
serve to increase Miss Blanche’s good-humor, and as it made 
her peevish and dissatisfied with hers«lf, it probably rendered 
her even less agreeable to the persons round about her. So 
there arose, one fatal day, a battle-royal between dearest 
Blanche and dearest Laura, in which the friendship between 
them was all but slain outright. Dearest Blanche had been 
unusually capricious and wicked on this day. She had been 
insolent to her mother ; savage with little Frank; odiously im- 
pertinent in her behavior to the boy’s governess ; and intolera- 
bly cruel to Pincott, her attendant. Not venturing to attack 
her friend (for the little tyrant was of a timid feline nature, and 
only used her claws upon those who were weaker than herself), 
she maltreated all these, and especially poor Pincott, who was 
menial, confidante, companion (slave always), according to the 
caprice of her young mistress. 

This girl, who had been sitting in the room with the young 
ladies, being driven thence in tears, occasioned by the cruelty 
of her mistress, and raked with a parting sarcasm as she went 
sobbing from the door, Laura fairly broke out into a loud and 
indignant invective — wondered how one so young could forget 
the difference owing to her elders as well as to her inferiors in 
station ; and professing so much sensibility of her own, could 
torture the feelings of others so wantonly. Laura told her 
friend that her conduct was absolutely wicked, and that she 
ought to ask pardon of Heaven on her knees for it. And hav- 
ing delivered herself of a hot and voluble speech whereof the 
delivery astonished the speaker as much almost as her auditor, 
she ran to her bonnet and shawl, and went home across the 
park in a great flurry and perturbation, and to the surprise of 
Mrs. Pendennis, who had not expected her until night. 

Alone with Helen, Laura gave an account of the scene, and 
gave up her friend henceforth. “ O Mamma,” she said, “ you 
were right ; Blanche, who seems so soft and so kind, is, as you 
have said, selfish and cruel. She who is always speaking of 
her affections can have no heart. No honest girl would afflict a 
mother so, or torture a dependent ; and — and I give her up 
from this day, and I will have no other friend but you.” 

On this the two ladies went through the osculatory cere- 
mony which they were in the habit of performing, and- Mrs. 
Pendennis got a great secret comfort from the little quarrel — 
for Laura’s confession seemed to say, “ That girl can never be 
a wife for Pen, for she is light-minded and heartless, and quite 
unworthy of our noble hero. Pie will be sure to find out her 


PENDZmtS. 


246 

unworthiness for his own part, and then he will be saved from 
this flighty creature, and awake out of his delusion.” 

But Miss Laura did- not tell Mrs. Pendennis, perhaps' did 
not acknowledge to herself, what had been the real cause of the 
day’s quarrel. Being in a very wicked mood, and bent upon 
mischief everywhere, the little wicked Muse of a Blanche had 
very soon begun her tricks. Her darling Laura had come to 
pass a long day ; and as they were sitting in her own room to- 
gether, had chosen to bring the conversation round to the sub- 
ject of Mr. Pen. 

“ I am afraid he is sadly fickle,” Miss Blanche observed ; 
“ Mrs. Pybus, and many more Clavering people, have told us 
all about the aotress.” 

“ I was quite a child when it happened, and I don’t know 
anything about it,” Laura answered, blushing very much. 

“ He used her very ill,” Blanche said, wagging her little 
head. “ He was false to her.” 

“ I am sure he was not,” Laura cried out ; “ he acted most 
generously by her : he wanted to give up everything to many 
her. It was she that was false to him. He nearly broke his 
heart about it : he ” 

“ I thought you didn’t know anything about the story, dear- 
est,” interposed Miss Blanche. 

“ Mamma has said so,” said Laura. 

“ Well, he is very clever,” continued the other little dear. 
“ What a sweet poet he is ! Have you ever read his poems ? ” 

“ Only the ‘ Fisherman and the Diver,’ which he translated 
for us, and his Prize Poem, which didn’t get the prize ; and, 
indeed, I thought it very pompous and prosy,” Laura said 
laughing. 

“ Has he never written you any poems, then, love ? ” asked 
Miss Amory. 

“ No, my dear,” said Miss Bell. 

Blanche ran up to her friend, kissed her fondly, called her 
my dearest Laura at least three times, looked her archly in the 
face, nodded her head, and said, “ Promise to tell no-o-body, 
and I will show you something.” 

And tripping across the room daintily to a little mother-of- 
pearl inlaid desk, she opened it with a silver key, and took out 
two or three papers crumbled and rather stained with green, 
which she submitted to her friend. Laura took them and read 
them. They were love-verses sure enough — something about 
Undine — about a Naiad — about a river. She looked at them 
for a long time ; but in truth the lines were not very distinct 
before her eyes. 


PENDEJSrms. 


247 

“ And you have answered them, Blanche ? ” she asked, 
putting them back. 

“ O no ! not for worlds, dearest,” the other said : and when 
her dearest Laura had quite done with the verses, she tripped 
back, and popped them again into the pretty desk. 

Then she went to her piano, and sang two or three songs of 
Rossini, whose flourishes of music her flexible little voice could 
execute to perfection, and Laura sat by, vaguely listening, as 
she performed these pieces. What was Miss Bell thinking 
about the while ? She hardly knew ; but sat there silent as 
the songs rolled by. After this concert the young ladies were 
summoned to the room where luncheon was served ; and 
whither they of course went with their arms round each other’s 
waists. 

And it could not have been jealousy or anger on Laura’s 
part which had made her silent : for, after they had tripped 
along the corridor and descended the steps, and were about to 
open the door which leads into the hall, Laura paused, and 
looking her friend kindly and frankly in the face, kissed her 
with a sisterly warmth. 

Something occurred after this — Master Frank’s manner of 
eating, probably, or mamma’s blunders, or Sir Francis smelling 
of cigars — which vexed Miss Blanche, and she gave way to that 
series of naughtinesses whereof we have spoken, and which 
ended in the above little quarrel. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

- A HOUSE FULL OF VISITORS. 

The difference between the girls did not last long. Laura 
was always too eager to forgive and be forgiven, and as for 
Miss Blanche, her hostilities, never very long or durable, had 
not been provoked by the above scene. Nobody cares about 
being accused of wickedness. No vanity is hurt by that sort of 
charge : Blanche was rather pleased than provoked by her 
friend’s indignation, which never would have been raised but 
for a cause which both knew, though neither spoke of. 

And so Laura, with a sigh, was obliged to confess that the 


PRNDENNIS. 


romantic part of her first friendship was at an end, and that 
the object of it was only worthy of a very ordinary sort of 
regard. 

As for Blanche, she instantly composed a copy of touching 
verses, setting forth her desertion and disenchantment. It was 
only the old story she wrote, of love meeting with coldness, 
and fidelity returned by neglect ; and some new neighbors ar- 
riving from London about this time, in whose family there were 
daughters, Miss Amory had the advantage of selecting an eter- 
nal friend from one of these young ladies, and imparting her 
sorrows and disappointments to this new sister. The tall foot- 
man came but seldom now with notes to the sweet Laura ; the 
pony-carriage was but rarely despatched to Fairoaks to be at 
the orders of the ladies there. Blanche adopted a sweet look 
of suffering martyrdom when Laura came to see her. The 
other laughed at her friend’s sentimental mood, and treated it 
with a good-humor that was by no means respectful. 

But if Miss Blanche found new female friends to console her, 
the faithful historian is also bound to say, that she discovered 
some acquaintances of the other sex who seemed to give her 
consolation too. If ever this artless yqung creature met a 
young man, and had ten minutes’ conversation with him in a 
garden walk, in a drawing-room window, or in the intervals of 
a waltz, she confided in him, so to speak — made play with her 
beautiful eyes — spoke in a tone of tender interest, and simple 
and touching appeal, and left him, to perform the same pretty 
little drama in behalf of his successor. 

When the Claverings first came down to the Park, there 
were very few audiences before whom Miss Blanche could per- 
form : hence Pen had all the benefits of her glances, and con- 
fidences, and the drawing-room window, or the garden walk all 
to himself. In the town of Clavering, it has been said, there 
were actually no young men : in the near surrounding country, 
only a curate or two, or a rustic young squire, with large feet 
and ill made clothes. To the dragoons quartered at Chatteris 
the Baronet made no overtures : it was unluckily his own regi- 
ment : he had left it on bad terms with some officers of the 
corps — an ugly business about a horse bargain — a disputed 
play account at blind-Hookey — a white feather — who need ask ? 
— it is not our business to inquire too closely into the by-gones 
of our characters, except in so far as their previous history ap- 
pertains to the development of this present story. 

The autumn, and the end of the Parliamentary Session, 
and the London season, brought one or two country fam- 


PENDENNIS. 


249 


ilies down to their houses, and filled tolerably the neighbor- 
ing little watering-place of Baymouth, and opened our friend 
Mr. Bingley’s Theatre Royal at Chatteris, and collected the 
usual company at the Assizes and Race-balls there. Up to 
this time, the old country families had been rather shy of our 
friends of Clavering Park. The Fogys of Drummington ; the 
Squares of Dozley Park ; the Welbores of the Barrow, &c. 
All sorts of stories were current among these folks regarding 
the family at Clavering ; — indeed, nobody ought to say that 
people in the county have no imagination, who hear them talk 
about new neighbors. About Sir Francis and his lady, and 
her birth and parentage, about Miss Amory, about Captain 
Strong, there had been endless histories which need not be re- 
capitulated ; and the family of the Park had been three months 
in the county before the great people around began to call. 

But at the end of the season, the Earl of Trehawke, Lord 
Lieutenant of the County, coming to Eyrie Castle, and the 
Countess Dowager of Rockminster, whose son was also a 
magnate of the land, to occupy a mansion on the Marine Parade 
at Baymouth — these great folks came publicly, immediately, 
and in state, to call upon the family of Clavering Park ; and the 
carriages of the county families speedily followed in the track, 
which had been left in the avenue by their lordly wheels. 

It was then that Mirobolant began to have an opportunity 
of exercising that skill which he possessed, and of forgetting, in 
the occupations of his art, the pangs of love. It was then that 
the large footmen were too much employed at Clavering Park 
to be able to bring messages, or dally over the cup of small 
beer with the poor little maids at Fairoaks. It was then that 
Blanche found other dear friends than Laura, and other places 
to walk in besides the river side, where Pen was fishing. He 
came dav after day, and whipped the stream, but the “ fish, 
fish ! ” wouldn’t do their duty, nor the Pen appear. And here, 
though in strict confidence, and with a request that the matter 
go no further, we may as well allude to a delicate business, of 
which previous hint has been given. Mention has been made, 
in a former page, of a certain hollow tree, at which Pen used to 
take his station when engaged in his passion for Miss Fother- 
ingay, and the cavity of which he afterwards used for other 
purposes than to insert his baits and fishing-cans in. The truth 
is, he converted this tree into a post-office. Under a piece of 
moss and a stone, he used to put little poems, or letters equally 
poetical, which were addressed to a certain Undine, or Naiad 
who frequented the stream, and which, once or twice, were 


250 


PENDENNIS. 


replaced by a receipt in the shape of a flower, or by a modest 
little word or two of acknowledgment, written in a delicate 
hand, in French or English, and on pink scented paper. Cer- 
tainly, Miss Amory used to walk by this stream, as we have 
seen ; and it is a fact that she used pink scented paper for her 
correspondence. But after the great folks had invaded Claver- 
ing Park, and the family coach passed out of the lodge-gates, 
evening after evening, on their way to the other great country 
houses, nobody came to fetch Pen’s letters at the post-office ; 
the white paper was not exchanged for the pink, but lav undis- 
turbed under its stone and its moss, whilst the tree was' reflect- 
ed into the stream, and the Brawl went rolling by. There was 
not much in the letters certainly : in the pink notes scarcely 
anything— merely a little word or two, half jocular, half sym- 
pathetic, such as might be written by any young lady. But oh, 
you silly Pendennis, if you wanted this one, why did you not 
speak ? Perhaps neither party was in earnest. You were only 
playing at being in love, and the sportive little Undine was 
humoring you at the same play. 

Nevertheless if a man is baulked at this game, he not un- 
rrequently loses his temper ; and when nobody came any more 
or 1 en s poems, he began to 1 look upon those compositions in a 
very serious light. Pie felt almost tragical and romantic again, 
as in his first affair of the heart : — at any rate he was bent upon 
having an explanation. One day he went to the Hall, and there 
was a room full of visitors : on another, Miss Amory was not to 
be seen ; she was going to a ball that night, and was lying down 
to take a little sleep Pen cursed balls, and the narrowness of 
his means, and the humility of his position in the county that 
caused him to be passed over by the givers of these entertain- 
ments. On a third occasion, Miss Amory was in the garden 
and he ran thither; she was walking there in state with no less 
personages than the Bishop and Bishopess of Chatteris and the 
episcopal family, who scowled at him, and drew up in great 
dignity when he was presented to them, and they heard his 
name The Right Reverend Prelate had heard it 'before, and 
also of the little transaction in the Dean’s garden 

T TTT, ^- hop S ^l' VOU ,’ re a , sad >-° un S man >” good-natured 
Lady Clavenng whts^ered to him. “ What have you been a 

doing of ? Nothink, I hope, to vex such a dear Mar as yours > 
How is your dear Mar? Why don’t she come and see me? 
He an t seen her this ever such a time. We’re a goin about a 
gadclin, so that we don t see no neighbors now. Give my love 
to her and Laurar, and come all to dinner to-morrow.” 


PENDENNIS . 


2 5 * 


Mrs, Pendennis was too unwell to come out, but Laura and 
1 en came, and there was a great party, and Pen only got an 
opportunity of a hurried word with Miss Amory. “ You never 
come to the river now,” he said. 

.. l T ca . n . sa ^ Blanche, “the house is full of people.” 

^ Undine has left the stream,” Mr. Pen went on, choosing 
to be poetical. s 


She never ought to have gone there,” Miss Amory answer- 
ed. bhe won t go again. It was very foolish, very wrong : it 
was only play Besides, .you have other consolations at home,” 

her eyes * °°^ m ^ lim ^ * n t ^ ie ^ ace an instant, and dropping 


If he wanted her, why did he not speak then ? She might 
have said “Yes ” even then. But as she spoke of other con- 
solations at home, he thought of Laura, so affectionate and so 
pure, and of his mother at home, who had bent her fond heart 
upon uniting him with her adopted daughter. “ Blanche ! ” he 
began, in a vexed tone, — “ Miss Amory ! ” 

“ Laura is looking at us, Mr. Pendennis,” the young lady 
said. - “I must go back to the company,” and she ran off, 
leaving Mr. Pendennis to bite his nails in perplexity, and to 
look out into the moonlight in the garden. 

Laura indeed was looking at Pen. She was talking with 01 
appearing to listen to the talk of, Mr. Pynsent, Lord Rock- 
minster s son, and grandson of the Dowager Lady, who was 
seated in state in the place of honor, gravely receiving Lady 
Clavering’s bad grammar, and patronizing the vacuous . Sir 
Francis, whose interest in the county she was desirous to secure. 
Pynsent and Pen had been at Oxbridge together, where the 
latter, during his heyday of good fortune and fashion, had been 
the superior of the young patrician, and perhaps rather'super- 
cilious towards him. They had met for the first time, since 
they had parted at the University, at the table to-day, and given 
each other that exceedingly impertinent and amusing demi-nod 
of recognition which is practised in England only, and only to 
perfection by University men,— and which seems to say, “ Con- 
found you — what do you do here ? ” 

“ I knew that man at Oxbridge,” Mr. Pynsent said to Miss 
Bell — “a Mr. Pendennis, I think.” 

. “ Yes,” said Miss Bell — 


“ He seems rather sweet upon Miss Amory,” the gentleman 
went on. Laura looked at them, and perhaps thought so too, 
but said nothing. 

“ A man of large property in the county, ain’t he ? He 


PENDENNTS. 


2 52 

used to talk about representing it. He used to speak at the 
Union. Whereabouts do his estates lie ? ” 

Laura smiled. “ His estates lie on the other side of the 
river, near the lodge gate. He is my cousin, and I live there.” 

“ Where ? ” asked Mr. Pynsent, with a laugh. 

“ Why, on the other side of the river, at Fairoaks,” an- 
swered Miss Bell. 

“ Many pheasants there ? Cover looks rather good,” said 
the simple gentleman. 

Laura smiled again. “ We have *iine hens and a cock, a 
pig, and an old pointer.” 

“ Pendennis don’t preserve, then ? ” continued Mr. Pynsent. 

“ You should come and see him,” the girl said, laughing, and 
greatly amused at the notion that her Pen was a great county 
gentleman, and perhaps had given himself out to be such. 

“ Indeed, I quite long to renew our acquaintance,” Mr. 
Pynsent said, gallantly, and with a look which fairly said, “ It 
is you that I would like to come and see ” — to which look and 
speech Miss Laura vouchsafed a smile, and made a little bow. 

Here Blanche came stepping up with her most fascinating 
smile and ogle, and begged dear Laura to come and take the 
second in a song. Laura was ready to do anything good-natured, 
and went to the piano ; by which Mr. Pynsent listened as long 
as the duet lasted, and until Miss Amory began for herself, 
when he strode away. 

“ What a nice, frank, amiable, well-bred girl that is, Wagg,” 
said Mr. Pynsent to a gentleman who had come over with him 
from Baymouth — “the tall one I mean, with the ringlets and 
the red lips — monstrous red, ain’t they ? ” 

“ What do you think of the girl of the house ? ” asked Mr. 
Wagg.* 

I think she’s a lean, scraggy humbug said Mr. Pynsent, 
with great candor. “ She drags her shoulders out of her dress : 
she never lets her eyes alone : and she goes simpering and 
ogling about like a French waiting-maid.” 

“ Pynsent, be civil,” cried the other, “ somebody can hear.” 

“ Oh, it’s Pendennis of Boniface,” Mr. Pynsent said. “ Fine 
evening, Mr. Pendennis; we were just talking of your charming 
cousin.” 

“ Any relation to my old friend, Major Pendennis ? ” asked 
Mr. Wagg. 

“ His nephew. Had the pleasure of meeting you at Gaunt 
House,” Mr. Pen said with his very best air — the acquaintance 
between the gentlemen was made in an instant. 


PENDENNIS. 


2 53 


In the afternoon of the next day, the two gentlemen who 
were staying at Clavering Park were found by Mr. Pen on his 
return from a fishing excursion, in which he had no sport, seated 
in his mother’s drawing-room in comfortable conversation with 
the widow and her ward. Mr. Pynsent, tall and gaunt, with 
large red whiskers and an imposing tuft to his chin,'was strid- 
ing over a chair in the intimate neighborhood of Miss Laura. 
She was amused by his talk, which was simple, straightforward, 
rather humorous, and keen, and interspersed with homely 
expressions of a style which is sometimes called slang. It was 
the first specimen of a young London dandy that Laura had 
seen or heard ; for she had been but a chit at the time of Mr. 
Foker’s introduction at Fairoaks, nor indeed was that ingenuous 
gentleman much more than a boy, and his refinement was only 
that of a school and college. 

Mr. Wagg, as he entered the Fairoaks premises with his 
companion, eyed and noted everything. “ Old gardener,” he 
said, seeing Mr. John at the lodge — “old red livery waistcoat 
— clothes hanging out to dry on the gooseberry bushes — blue 
aprons, white ducks — gad, they must be young Pendennis’s 
white ducks — nobody else wears ’em in the family. Rather a 
shy place for a sucking county member, ay, Pynsent ? ” 

“ Snug little crib,” said Pynsent, “ pretty cozy little lawn.” 

“ Mr. Pendennis at home, old gentleman ? ” Mr. Wagg 
said to the old domestic. John answered, “No, Master Pen- 
dennis was agone out.” 

“ Are the ladies at home ? ” asked the younger visitor. Mr. 
John answered, “ Yes, they be ; ” and as the pair walked over 
the trim gravel, and by the neat shrubberies, up the steps to the 
hall-door, which old John opened, Mr. Wagg noted everything 
that he saw ; the barometer and the letter-bag, the umbrellas 
and the ladies’ clogs, Pen’s hats and tartan wrapper, and old 
John opening the drawing-room door, to introduce the new- 
comers. Such minutiae attracted Wagg instinctively ; he seized 
them in spite of himself. 

“ Old fellow does all the work,” he whispered to Pynsent. 
“ Caleb Balderstone. Shouldn’t wonder if he’s the house- 
maid.” The next minute the pair were in the presence of the 
Fairoaks ladies ; in whom Pynsent could not help recognizing 
two perfectly well-bred ladies, and to whom Mr. Wagg made 
his obeisance, with florid bows, and extra courtesy, accompanied 
with an occasional knowing leer at his companion. Mr. Pyn- 
sent did not choose to acknowledge these signals, except by 
extreme haughtiness towards Mr. Wagg, and particular defer- 


254 


PENDENNIS . 


ence to the ladies. If there was one thing laughable in Mr. 
Wagg’s eyes, it was poverty. He had the soul of a butler who 
had been brought from his pantry to make fun in the drawing- 
room. His jokes were plenty, and his good-nature thoroughly 
genuine, but he did not seem to understand that a gentleman 
could weaf an old coat, or that a lady could be respectable 
unless she had her carriage, or employed a French milliner. 

“ Charming place, ma’am,” said he, bowing to the widow ; 
“ noble prospect — delightful to us Cockneys, who seldom see 
anything but Pall Mall.” The widow said, simply, she had never 
been in London but once in her life — before her son was born. 

“Fine village, ma’am, fine village,” said Mr. Wagg, “and 
increasing every day. It’ll be quite a large town soon. It’s 
not a bad place to live in for those who can’t get the country, 
and will repay a visit when you honor it.” 

“ My brother, Major Pendennis, has often mentioned your 
name to us,” the widow said, “ and we have been — amused by 
some of your droll books, sir,” Helen continued, who never 
could be brought to like Mr. Wagg’s books, and detested their 
tone most thoroughly. 

“ He is my very good friend,” Mr. Wagg said, with a low 
bow, “ and one of the best known men about town, and where 
known, ma’am, appreciated — I assure you appreciated. He is 
with our friend Steyne, at Aix-la-Chapelle. Steyne has a touch 
of the gout, and so, between ourselves, has your brother. I 
am going to Stillbrook for the pheasant-shooting, and after- 
wards to Bareacres, where Pendennis and I shall probably 
meet ; ” and he poured out a flood of fashionable talk, intro- 
ducing the names of a score of peers, and rattling on with breath 
less spirits, whilst the simple widow listened in silent wonder. 
What a man, she thought ; are all the men of fashion in Lon- 
don like this ? I am sure Pen will never be like him. 

Mr. Pynsent was in the meanwhile engaged with Miss 
Laura. He named some of the houses in the neighborhood 
whither he was going, and hoped very much that he should see 
Miss Bell at some of them. He hoped that her aunt would 
give her a season in London. He said, that in the next parlia- 
ment it was probable he should canva*ss the county, and he 
hoped to get Pendennis’s interest here. He spoke of Pen’s 
triumph as an orator at Oxbridge, and asked was he coming 
into parliament too ? He talked on very pleasantly, and greatly 
to Laura’s satisfaction, until Pen himself appeared, and as has 
been said, found these gentlemen. 

Pen behaved very courteously to the pair, now that they had 


PENDENNIS. 


2 55 

found their way into his quarters ; and though he recollected 
with some twinges a conversation at Oxbridge, when Pynsent 
was present, and in which, after a great debate at the Union, 
and in the midst of considerable excitement, produced by a 
supper and champagne-cup, — he had announced his intention of 
coming in for his native county, and had absolutely returned 
thanks in a fine speech as the future member ; yet Mr. Pynsent’s 
manner was so frank and cordial, that Pen hoped Pynsent might 
have forgotten his little fanfaronnade, and other braggadocio 
speeches or actions which he might have made. Pie suited him- 
self to the tone of the visitors then, and talked about Plinlimmon 
and Magnus Charters, and the old set at Oxbridge, with care- 
less familiarity and high-bred ease, as if he lived with marauises 
every day, and a duke was no more to him than a village 
curate. 

But at this juncture, and it being then six o’clock in the 
evening, Betsy, the maid, who did not know of the advent of 
strangers, walked into the room without any preliminary but 
that of flinging the door wide open before her, and bearing in 
her arms a tray, containing three teacups, a teapot, and a plate 
of thick bread-and-butter. All Pen’s splendor and magnificence 
vanished away at this — and he faltered and became quite 
abashed. “ What will they think of us ? ” he thought : and, in- 
deed, Wagg thrust his tongue in his cheek, thought the tea 
utterly contemptible, and leered and winked at Pynsent to that 
effect. 

But to Mr. Pynsent the transaction appeared perfectly 
simple — there was no reason present to his mind why people 
should not drink tea at six if they were minded, as well as at 
any other hour ; and he asked of Mr. Wagg, when they went 
away, “ What the devil he was grinning and winking at, and 
what amused him ? ” 

“ Didn’t you see how the cub was ashamed of the thick 
bread-and-butter ? I dare say they’re going to have treacle if 
they are good. I’ll take an opportunity of telling old Pendennis 
when we get back to town,” Mr. Wagg chuckled out. 

“ Don’t see the fun,” said Mr. Pynsent. 

“ Never thought you did,” growled Wagg between his teeth ; 
and they walked home rather sulkily. 

Wagg told the story at dinner very smartly, with wonderful 
accuracy of observation. He described old John, the clothes 
that were drying, the clogs in the hall, the drawing-room, and 
its furniture and pictures ; “ Old man with a beak and bald 
head — -feu Pendennis I bet two to one ; sticking-plaster full- 


PENDENN2S. 


256 

length of a youth in a cap and gown — the present Marquis of 
Fairoaks, of course ; the widow when young in a miniature, 
Mrs. Mee ; she had the gown on when we came, or a dress made 
the year after, and the tips cut off the fingers of her gloves 
which she stitches her son’s collars with ; and then the sarving 
maid came in with their teas ; so we left the Earl and the 
Countess to their bread-and-butter.” 

Blanche, near whom he sat as he told this story, and who 
adored les hommes d’ esprit, burst out laughing, and called him 
such an odd, droll creature. But Pynsent, who began to be 
utterly disgusted with him, broke out into a loud voice, and 
. said, “ I don’t know, Mr. Wagg, what sort of ladies you are 
accustomed to meet in your own family, but by gad, as far as a 
first acquaintance can show, I never met two better bred women 
in my life, and I hope, ma’am, you’ll call upon ’em,” he added, 
addressing Lady Rockminster, who was seated at Sir Francis 
Clavering’s right hand. 

Sir Francis turned to the guest on his left, and whispered, 
“That’s what I call .a sticker for Wagg.” And Lady Clavering, 
giving the young gentleman a delighted tap with her fan, winked 
her black eyes at him, and said, “ Mr. Pynsent, you’re a good 
feller.” 

After the affair with Blanche, a difference ever so slight, a 
tone of melancholy, perhaps a little bitter, might be perceived in 
Laura’s converse with her cousin. She seemed to weigh him, 
and find him wanting too ; the widow saw the girl’s clear and 
honest eyes watching the young man at times, and a look of 
almost scorn pass over her face, as he lounged in the room with 
the woman, or lazily sauntered smoking upon the lawn, or loll^l 
under a tree there over a book, which he was too listless to 
read. 

“ What has happened between you ? ” eager-sighted Helen 
asked of the girl. “ Something has happened. Has that wicked 
little Blanche been making mischief ? Tell me, Laura.” 

“ Nothing has happened at all,” Laura said. 

“ Then why do you look at Pen so ? ” asked his mother 
quickly. 

“ Look at him, dear mother ! ” said the girl. “ We two 
women are no society for him : we don’t interest him ; we are 
not clever enough for such a genius as Pen. He wastes his life 
and energies away among us, tied to our apron-strings. He in- 
terests himself in nothing : he scarcely cares to go beyond the 
garden-gate. Even Captain Glanders and Captain Strong pall 
upon him,” she added with a bitter laugh ; “ and they are men 


PENDENNIS. 


2 57 


you know, and our superiors. He will never be happy while he 
is here. Why is he not facing the world, and without a pro- 
fession ? ” 

“We have got enough, with great economy,” said the 
widow, her heart beginning to beat violently. “ Pen has spent 
nothing for months. I’m sure he is very good. I am sure he 
might be very happy with us.” 

“ Don’t agitate yourself so, dear mother,” the girl answered. 
“ I don’t like to see you so. You should not be sad because 
Pen is unhappy here. All men are so. They must work. 
They must make themselves names and a place in the world. 
Look, the two captains have fought and seen battles : that Mr. 
Pynsent, who came here, and who will be very rich, is in a 
public office ; he works very hard, he aspires to a name and a 
reputation. He says Pen was one of the best speakers at Ox- 
bridge, and had as great a character for talent as any of the 
young gentlemen there. Pen himself laughs at Mr. Wagg’s 
celebrity (and indeed he is a horrid person), and says he is a 
dunce, and that anybody could write his books.” 

“ I am sure they are odious,” interposed the widow. 

“ Yet he has a reputation. — You see the County Chronicle 
says, ‘ The celebrated Mr. Wagg has been sojourning at Bay- 
mouth — let our fashionables and eccentrics look out for some- 
thing from his caustic pen.’ If Pen can write better than this 
gentleman, and speak better than Mr. Pynsent, why doesn’t he? 
Mamma, he can’t make speeches to us ; or distinguish himself 
here. He ought to go away, indeed he ought.” 

“ Dear Laura,” said Helen, taking the girl’s hand. “ Is it 
kind of you to hurry him so ? I have been waiting. I have 
been saving up money these many months — to — to pay back 
your advance to us.” 

“ Hush, mother ! ” Laura cried, embracing her friend hastily. 
“ It was your money, not mine. Never speak about that again. 
How much money have you saved ? ” 

Helen said there were more than two hundred pounds at the 
bank, and that she would be enabled to pay off all Laura’s 
money by the end of the next year. 

“ Give it him — let him have the two hundred pounds. Let 
him go to London and be a lawyer : be something, be worthy 
of his mother — and of mine, dearest mamma,” said the good 
girl ; upon which, and with her usual tenderness and emotion, 
the fond widow declared that Laura was a blessing to her, and 
the best of girls — and I hope no one in this instance will be 
disposed to contradict her. 


7 


258 


PENDENNIS. 


The widow and her daughter had more than one conversa* 
tion on this subject : the elder gave way to the superior reason 
of the honest and stronger minded girl ; and, indeed, whenever 
there was a sacrifice to be made on her part, this kind lady was 
only too eager to make it. But she took her own way, and did 
not lose sight of the end she had in view, in imparting these 
new plans to Pen. One day she told him of these projects, 
and who it was that had formed them ; how it was Laura who 
insisted upon his going to London and studying ; how it was 
Laura who would not hear of the — the money arrangements 
when he came back from Oxbridge — being settled just then : 
how it was Laura whom he had to thank, if indeed he thought 
he ought to go. 

At that news Pen’s countenance blazed up with pleasure, 
and he hugged his mother to his heart with an ardor that I fear 
disappointed the fond lady ; but she rallied when he said, “ By 
Heaven ! she is a noble girl, and may God Almighty bless her ! 
Oh mother ! I have been wearying myself away for months 
here, longing to work, and not knowing how. I’ve been fret- 
ting over the thoughts of my shame, and my debts, and my 
past cursed extravagance and follies. I’ve suffered infernally. 
My heart has been half-broken — never mind about that. If I 
can get a chance to redeem the past, and to do my duty to 
myself and the best mother in the world, indeed, indeed, I will. 
I’ll be worthy of you yet. Heaven bless you ! God bless 
Laura ! Why isn’t she here, that I may go and thank her ? ” 
Pen went on with more incoherent phrases ; paced up and 
down the room, drank glasses of water, jumped about his 
mother with a thousand embraces — began to laugh — began to 
sing — was happier than she had seen him since he was a boy — 
since he had tasted of the fruit of that awful Tree of Life which, 
from the beginning, has tempted all mankind. 

Laura was not at home. Laura was on a visit to the stately 
Lady Rockminster, daughter to my Lord Bareacres, sister to 
the late Lady Pontypool, and by consequence a distant kins- 
woman of Helen’s, as her ladyship, who was deeply versed in 
genealogy, was the first graciously to point out to the modest 
country lady. Mr. Pen was greatly delighted at the relation- 
ship being acknowledged, though perhaps not over well pleased 
that Lady Rockminster took Miss Bell home with her for a 
couple of days to Baymouth, and did not make the slightest 
invitation to Mr. Arthur Pendennis. There was to be a ball at 
Baymouth, and it was to be Miss Laura’s first appearance. 


PENDENNIS . 


2 59 

The dowager came to fetch her in her carriage, and she went 
off with a white dress in her box, happy and blushing, like the 
rose to which Pen compared her. 

This was the night of the ball — a public entertainment at 
the Baymouth Hotel. “ By Jove ! ” said Pen, “ I’ll ride over — 
No, I won’t ride, but I’ll go too.” His mother was charmed 
that he should do so ; and, as he was debating about the con- 
veyance in which he should start for Baymouth, Captain Strong 
called opportunely, said he was going himself, and that he 
would put his horse, The Butcher Boy, into the gig, and drive 
Pen over. 

When the grand company began to fill the house at Claver- 
ing Park, the Chevalier Strong seldom intruded himself upon 
its society, but went elsewhere to seek his relaxation. “ I’ve seen 
plenty of grand dinners in my time,” he said, “ and dined, by 
Jove, in a company where there was a king and royal duke at 
top and bottom, and every m in along the table had six stars on 
his coat ; but dammy, Glanders, this finery don’t suit me ; and 
the English ladies with their confounded buckram airs, and the 
squires with their politics after dinner, send me to sleep — sink 
me dead if they don’t. I like a place where I can blow my 
cigar when the cloth is removed, and when I’m thirsty, have 
my beer in its native pewter.” So on a gala day at Clavering 
Park, the Chevalier would content himself with superintending 
the arrangements of the table, and drilling the major-domo and 
servants ; and having looked over the bill of fare with Monsieur 
Mirobolant, would not care to take the least part in the banquet. 
“ Send me up a cutlet and a bottle of claret to my room,” this 
philosopher would say, and from the windows of that apart- 
ment, which commanded the terrace and avenue, he would 
survey the company as they arrived in their carriages, or take 
a peep at the ladies in the hall through an ceil-de-bceuf which 
commanded it from his corridor. And the guests being seated, 
Strong would cross the park to Captain Glanders’s cottage at 
Clavering, or to pay the landlady a visit at the Clavering Arms, 
or to drop in upon Madame Fribsby over her novel and tea. 
Wherever the Chevalier went he was welcome, and whenever 
he came away a smell of hot brandy-and-water lingered behind 
him. 

The Butcher Boy — not the worst horse in Sir Francis’s 
stable — was appropriated to Captain Strong’s express use ; and 
the old Campaigner saddled him and brought . him home at all 
hours of the day or night, and drove or rode him up and down 
the country. Where there was a public-house with a good tap 


PEND ENNIS. 


t6o 

of beer — where there was a tenant with a pretty daughter who 
played on the piano — to Chatteris, to the play, or the barracks — ■ 
to Baymouth, if any fun was on foot there ; to the rural fairs or 
races, the Chevalier and his brown horse made their way 
continually ; and this worthy gentleman lived at free quarters 
in a friendly country. The Butcher Boy soon took Pen and 
the Chevalier to Baymouth. The latter was as familiar with 
the hotel and landlord there as with every other inn round about ; 
and having been accommodated with a bedroom to dress, 
they entered the ball-room. The Chevalier was splendid. He 
wore three little gold crosses in a brochette on the portly 
breast of his blue coat, and looked like a foreign field-marshal. 

The ball was public and all sorts of persons were admitted 
and encouraged to come, young Pynsent having views upon the 
county, and Lady Rockminster being patroness of the ball. 
There was a quadrille for the aristocracy at one end, and select 
benches for the people of fashion. Towards this end the 
Chevalier did not care to penetrate far (as he said he did not 
care for the nobs); but in the other part of the room he knew 
everybody — the wine-merchants’, innkeepers’, tradesmen’s, so- 
licitors’, squire-farmers’ daughters, their sires and brothers, and 
plunged about shaking hands. 

“ Who is that man with the blue ribbon and the three-pointed 
star ? ” asked Pen. A gentleman in black with ringlets and a 
tuft stood gazing fiercely about him, w ; th one hand in the arm- 
hole of his waistcoat and the other holding his claque. 

“By Jupiter, it’s Mirobolant !” cried Strong, bursting out 
laughing. “ Bon jour , Chef! — Bon jour, Chevalier! ” 

“ De la croix de Juillet , Chevalier /” said the Chef, laying 
his hand on his decoration. 

“ By Jove, here’s some more ribbon ! ” said Pen, amused. 

A man with very black hair and whiskers, dyed evidently 
with the purple of Tyre, with twinkling eyes and white eye- 
lashes, and a thousand wrinkles in his face, which was of a 
strange red color, with two under-vests, and large gloves and 
hands, and a profusion of diamonds and jewels in his waistcoat 
and stock, with coarse feet crumpled into immense shiny boots, 
and a piece of parti-colored ribbon in his button-hole, here came 
up and nodded familiarly to the Chevalier. 

The Chevalier shook hands. “ My friend Mr. Pendennis,” 
Strong said. “ Colonel Altamont, of the body-guard of his 
Highness the Nawaub of Lucknow.” That officer bowed to 
the salute of Pen ; who was now looking out eagerly to see if 
the person he wanted had entered the room. 


PENDENNIS. 


26\ 


Not yet. But the band began presently performing “ See 
the Conquering Hero comes,” and a host of fashionables — - 
Dowager Countess of Rockminster, Mr. Pynsent and Miss Bell, 
Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., of Clavering Park, Lady Claver- 
ing and Miss Amory, Sir Horace Fogey, Bart., Lady Fogey, 

Colonel and Mrs. Higgs, Wagg, Esq. (as the county paper 

afterwards described them), entered the room. 

Pen rushed by Blanche, ran up to Laura, and seized her 
hand. “ God bless you ! ” he said, “ I want to speak to you 
— I must speak to you — Let me dance with you.” “ Not for 
three dances, dear Pen,” she said, smiling : and he fell back, 
biting his nails with vexation, and forgetting to salute Pyn- 
sent. 

After Lady Rockminster’s party, Lady Clavering’s followed 
in the procession. 

Colonel Altamont eyed it hard, holding a most musky 
pocket-handkerchief up to his face, and bursting with laughter 
behind it. 

“ Who’s the gal in green along with ’em, Cap’n ? ” he asked 
of Strong. 

“ That’s Miss Amory, Lady Clavering’s daughter,” replied 
the Chevalier. 

The Colonel could hardly contain himself for laughing. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

CONTAINS SOME BALL-PRACTISING. 

Under some calico draperies in the shady embrasure of a 
window, Arthur Pendennis chose to assume a very gloomy and 
frowning countenance, and to watch Miss Bell dance her first 
quadrille with Mr. Pynsent for a partner. Miss Laura’s face 
was beaming with pleasure and good-nature. The lights 
and the crowd and music excited her. As she spread out 
her white robes, and performed her part of the dance, smil- 
ing and happy, her brown ringlets flowing back over her fair 
shoulders from her honest rosy face, more than one gentleman 
in the room admired and looked after her ; and Lady Fogey, 
who had a house in London, and gave herself no small airs of 
fashion when in the country, asked of Lady Rockminster who 


262 


PENDENNIS. 


the young person was, mentioned a reigning beauty in London 
whom, in her ladyship’s opinion, Laura was rather like, and 
pronounced that she would “ do.” 

Lady Rockminster would have been very much surprised if 
zxsy protegee oi hers would not “do,” and wondered at Lady 
Fogey’s impudence in judging upon the point at all. She sur- 
veyed Laura with majestic glances through her eye-glass. She 
was pleased with the girl’s artless looks, and gay innocent man- 
ner. Her manner is very good, her ladyship thought. Her 
arms are rather red, but that is a defect of her youth. Her 
ton is far better than that of the little pert Miss Amory, who is 
dancing opposite to her. 

Miss Blanche was, indeed, the vis-a-vis of Miss Laura, and 
smiled most killingly upon her dearest friend, and nodded to 
her, and talked to her, when they met during the quadrille evo- 
lutions, and patronized her a great deal. Her shoulders were 
the whitest in the whole room : and they were never easy in her 
frock for one single instant : nor were her eyes, which rolled 
about incessantly : nor was her little figure : — it seemed to say 
to all the people, “ Come and look at me — not at that pink, 
healthy, bouncing country lass, Miss Bell, who scarcely knew 
how to dance till I taught her. This is the true Parisian man- 
ner — this is the prettiest little foot in the room, and the pret- 
tiest little chaussure, too. Look at it, Mr. Pynsent. Look at 
it, Mr. Pendennis, you who are scowling behind the curtain — 
I know you are longing to dance with me.” 

Laura went on dancing, and keeping an attentive eye upon 
Mr. Pen in the embrasure of the window. He did not quit 
that retirement during the first quadrille, nor until the second, 
when the good-natured Lady Clavering beckoned to him to 
come up to her to the dais or place of honor where the dowa- 
gers were, and whither Pen went blushing and exceedingly 
awkward, as most conceited young fellows are. He performed 
a haughty salutation to Lady Rockminster, who hardly ac- 
knowledged his bow, and then went and paid his respects to 
the widow of the late Amory, who was splendid in diamonds, 
velvet, lace, feathers, and all sorts of millinery and goldsmith’s 
ware. 

Young Mr. Fogey, then in the fifth form at Eton, and ardently 
expecting his beard and his commission in a dragoon regiment, 
was the second partner who was honored with Miss Bell’s 
hand. He was rapt in admiration of that young lady. He 
thought he had never seen so charming a creature. “ I like 
you much better than the French girl ” (for this young gentle- 


PENDENNIS. 


263 

man had been dancing with Miss Amory before), he candidly 
said to her. Laura laughed, and looked more good-humored 
than ever ; and in the midst of her laughter caught a sight of 
Pen, and continued to laugh as he, on his side, continued to 
look absurdly pompous and sulky. The next dance was a 
waltz, and young Fogey thought, with a sigh, that he did not 
know how to waltz, and vowed he would have a master the 
next holidays. 

Mr. Pynsent again claimed Miss Bell’s hand for this dance ; 
and Pen beheld her, in a fury, twirling round the room, her 
waist encircled by the arm of that gentleman. He never used 
to be angry before when, on summer evenings, the chairs and 
tables being removed, and the governess called down stairs to 
play the piano, he and the Chevalier Strong (who was a splen- 
did performer, and could dance a British hornpipe, a German 
waltz, or a Spanish fandango, if need were), and the two young 
ladies, Blanche and Laura, improvised little balls at Clavering 
Park. Laura enjoyed this dancing so much, and was so an- 
imated that she even animated Mr. Pynsent. Blanche, who 
could dance beautifully, had an unlucky partner, Captain 
Broadfoot, of the Dragoons, then stationed at Chatteris. For 
Captain Broadfoot, though devoting himself with great energy 
to the object in view, could not get round in time : and, not 
having the least ear for music, was unaware that his movements 
were too slow. 

So, in the waltz as in the quadrille, Miss Blanche saw that 
her dear friend Laura had the honors of he dance, and was by 
no means pleased with the latter’s success. After a couple of 
turns with the heavy dragoon, she pleaded fatigue, and requested 
to be led back to her place, near her mamma, to whom Pen was 
talking : and she asked him why he had not asked her to waltz 
and had left her to the mercies of that great odious man in 
spurs and a red coat ? 

“ I thought spurs and scarlet were the most facinating ob- 
jects in the world to young ladies,” Pen answered. “ I never 
should have dared to put my black coat in competition with 
that splendid red jacket.” 

“You are very unkind and cruel and sulky and naughty,” 
said Miss Amory, with another shrug of the shoulders. “You 
had better go away. Your cousin is looking at us over Mr. 
Pynsent’s shoulder. 

“ Will you waltz with me ? ” said Pen. 

“Not this waltz. I can’t, having just sent away that great 
hot Captain Broadfoot. Look at Mr. Pynsent, did you ever see 


PENDENNIS. 


264 




such a creature ? But I will dance the next waltz with you, 
and the quadrille too. I am promised, but I will tell Mr. Poole 
that I had forgotten my engagement to you.” 

“ Women forget very readily,” Pendennis said. 

“ But they always come back, and are very repentant and 
sorry for what they’ve done,” Blanche said. “ See, here comes 
the Poker, and dear Laura leaning on him. How pretty she 
looks ! ” 

Laura came up, and put out her hand to Pen, to whom 
Pynsent made a sort of bow, appearing to be not much more 
graceful than that domestic instrument to which Miss Amory 
compared him. 

But Laura’s face was full of kindness. “ I am so glad you 
have come, dear Pen,” she said. “ I can speak to you now. 
How is mamma ? The three dances are over, and I am en- 
gaged to you for the next, Pen.” 

“ I have just engaged myself to Miss Amory,” said Pen ; 
and Miss Amory nodded her head, and made her usual little 
curtsey. “ I don’t intend to give him up, dearest Laura,” she 
said. 

“ Well, then, he’ll waltz with me, dear Blanche,” said the 
other. “ Won’t you, Pen ? ” 

“ I promised to waltz with Miss Amory.” 

“ Provoking ! ” said Laura, and making a curtsey in her 
turn, she went and placed herself under the ample wing of Lady 
Rockminster. 

Pen was delighted with his mischief. The two prettiest girls 
in the room were quarrelling about him. He flattered himself 
he had punished Miss Laura. He leaned in a dandified air, 
with his elbow over the wall, and talked to Blanche : he quizzed 
unmercifully all the men in the room — the heavy dragoons in 
their tight jackets — the country dandies in their queer attire — 
the strange toilettes of the ladies. One seemed to have a bird’s 
nest in her head ; another had six pounds of grapes in her hair, 
beside her false pearls. “ It’s a coiffure of almonds and raisins,” 
said Pen, “ and might be served up for dessert.” In a word, 
he was exceedingly satirical and amusing. 

During the quadrille he carried on this kind of conversation 
with unflinching bitterness and vivacity, and kept Blanche con- 
tinually laughing, both at his wickedness and jokes, which were 
good, and also because Laura was again their vis-d-vis , , and could 
see and hear how merry and confidential they were. 

“ Arthur is charming to-night,” she whispered to Laura, 
across Cornet Perch’s shell-jacket, as Pen was performing cava- 


PENDENNIS. 265 

Her seul before them, drawling through that figure with a thumb 
in the pocket of each waistcoat. 

“ Who ? ” said Laura. 

“ Arthur,’’ answered Blanche, in French. “ Oh, it’s such a 
pretty name ! ” And now the young ladies went over to Pen’s 
side, and Cornet Perch performed a pas jeul in his turn. He 
had no waistcoat pocket to put his hands into, and they looked 
large and swollen as they hung before him depending from the 
tight arms in the jacket. 

During the interval between the quadrille and the succeed- 
ing waltz, Pen did not take any notice of Laura, except to ask 
her whether her partner, Cornet Perch, was an amusing youth, 
and whether she liked him so well as her other partner, Mr. 
Pynsent. Having planted which two daggers in Laura’s bosom, 
Mr. Pendennis proceeded to rattle on with Blanche Amory, and 
to make jokes good or bad, but which were always loud. Laura 
was at a loss to account for her cousin’s sulky behavior, and 
ignorant in what she had offended him ; however, she was not 
angry in her turn at Pen’s splenetic mood, for she was the most 
good-natured and forgiving of women, and besides, an exhibi- 
tion of jealousy on a man’s part is not always disagreeable to a 
lady. 

As Pen could not dance with her, she was glad to take up 
with the active Chevalier Strong, who was a still better per- 
former than Pen ; and being very fond of dancing, as every 
brisk and innocent young girl should be, w r hen the waltz music 
began she set off, and chose to enjoy herself with all her heart. 
Captain Broadfoot on this occasion occupied the floor in con- 
junction with a lady of proportions scarcely inferior to his own ; 
Miss Roundle, a large young woman in a strawberry-ice colored 
crape dress, the daughter of the lady with the grapes in her 
head, whose bunches Pen had admired. 

And now taking his time, and with his fair partner Blanche 
hanging lovingly on the arm which encircled her, Mr. Arthur 
Pendennis set out upon his waltzing career, and felt, as he 
whirled round to the music, that he and Blanche were perform- 
ing very brilliantly indeed. Very likely he looked to see if 
Miss Bell thought so too ; but she did not or would not see 
him, and was always engaged with her partner Captain Strong. 
But Pen’s triumph was not destined to last long : and it was 
doomed that poor Blanche was to have yet another discomfiture 
on that unfortunate night. While she and Pen were whirling 
round as light and brisk as a couple of opefa-dancers, honest 
Captain Broadfoot and the lady round whose large waist he 


266 


PENDENNIS . 


was clinging, were twisting round very leisurely according to 
their natures, and indeed were in everybody’s way. But they 
were more in Pendennis’s way than in anybody’s else, for he 
and Blanche, whilst executing their rapid gyrations, came bolt 
up against the heavy dragoon and his lady, and with such force 
that the centre of gravity was lost by all four of the circum- 
volving bodies ; Captain Broadfoot and Miss Roundle were 
fairly upset, as was Pen himself, who was less lucky than his 
partner Miss Amory, who was only thrown upon a bench 
against a wall. 

But Pendennis came fairly down upon the floor, sprawling 
in the general ruin with Broadfoot and Miss Roundle. The 
Captain, though heavy, was good-natured, and was the first to 
burst out into a loud laugh at his own misfortune, which nobody 
therefore heeded. But Miss Amory was savage at her mishap ; 
Miss Roundle placed on her s'eant, and looking pitifully round, 
presented an object which very few people could see without 
laughing; and Pen was furious when he heard the people 
giggling about him. He was one of those sarcastic young 
fellows that did not bear a laugh at his own expense, and of all 
things in the world feared ridicule most. 

As he got up Laura and Strong were laughing at him ; 
everybody was laughing ; Pynsent and his partner were laugh- 
ing ; and Pen boiled with wrath against the pair, and could 
have stabbed them both on the spot. He turned away in a 
fury from them, and began blundering out apologies to Miss 
Amory. It was the other couple’s fault — the woman in pink 
had done it-— Pen hoped Miss Amory was not hurt — would she 
not have the courage to take another turn ? 

Miss Amory in a pet said she was very much hurt indeed, 
and she would not take another turn ; and she accepted with 
great thanks a glass of water which a cavalier, who wore a blue 
ribbon and a three-pointed star, rushed to fetch for her when 
he had seen the deplorable accident. She drank the water, 
smiled upon the bringer gracefully, and turning her white 
shoulder at Mr. Pen in the most marked and haughty manner, 
besought the gentleman with the star to conduct her to her 
mamma ; and she held out her hand in order to take his arm. 

The man with the star trembled with delight at this mark 
of her favor ; he bowed over her hand, pressed it to his coat 
fervidly, and looked round him with triumph. 

It was no other than the happy Mirobolant whom Blanche 
had selected as an # escort. But the truth is, that the young lady 
had never fairly looked into the artist’s face since he had been 


PENDENNIS. 


2 6f 

employed in her mother’s family, and had no idea but it wa^ 
a foreign nobleman on whose arm she was leaning As she 
went off, Pen forgot his humiliation in his surprise, and cried 
out, “ By Jove, it’s the cook ! ” 

The instant he had uttered the words, he was sorry for 
having spoken them — for it was Blanche who had herself 
invited Mirobolant to escort her, nor could the artist do other- 
wise than comply with a lady’s command. Blanche in her 
flutter did not hear what Arthur said ; but Mirobolant heard 
him and cast a furious glance at him over his shoulder, which 
rather amused Mr. Pen. He was in a mischievous and sulky 
humor ; wanting perhaps to pick a quarrel with somebody ; 
but the idea of having insulted a cook, or that such an individual 
should have any feeling of honor at all, did not much enter 
into the mind of this lofty young aristocrat, the apothecary’s 
son. 

It had never entered that poor artist’s head, that he as a 
man was not equal to any other mortal, or that there was 
anything in his position so degrading as to prevent him from 
giving his arm to a lady who asked for it. He had seen in the 
fetes in his own country fine ladies, not certainly demoiselles 
(but the demoiselle Anglaise he knew was a great deal more 
free than the spinster in France), join in the dance with Blaise 
or Pierre ; and he would have taken Blanche up to Lady 
Clavering, and possibly have asked her to dance too, but he 
heard Pen’s exclamation, which struck him as if it had shot 
him, and cruelly humiliated and angered him. She did not 
know what caused him to start, and to grind a Gascon oath 
between his teeth. 

But Strong, who was acquainted with the poor fellow’s state 
of mind, having had the interesting information from our friend 
Madame Fribsby, was luckily in the way when wanted, and 
saying something rapidly in Spanish, which the other under- 
stood, the Chevalier begged Miss Amory to come and take an 
ice before she went back to Lady Clavering. Upon which the 
unhappy Mirobolant relinquished the arm which he had held 
for a minute, and with a most profound and piteous bow, fell 
back. “ Don’t you know who it is Strong asked of Miss Amory, 
as he led her away. “ It is the chef Mirobolant.” 

“ How should I know ? ” asked Blanche. “ He has a croix ; 
he is very distingue ; he has beautiful eyes.” 

“The poor fellow is mad for your beaux yeux, I believe,” 
Strong said. “ He is a very good cook, but he is not quite right 
in the head.” 


PENDENNIS. 


268 


“ What did you say to him in the unknown tongue ? ” asked 
Miss Blanche. 

“ He is a Gascon, and comes from the borders of Spain,” 
Strong answered. “ I told him he would lose his place if he 
walked with you.” 

“ Poor Monsieur Mirobolant ! ” said Blanche. 

“ Did you see the look he gave Pendennis ? ” — Strong asked, 
enjoying the idea of the mischief — “ I think he would like to 
run little Pen through with one of his spits.” 

“ He is an odious, conceited, clumsy creature, that Mr. Pen,” 
said Blanche. 

“ Broadfoot looked as if he would like to kill him too, so 
did Pynsent,” Strong said. “ What ice will you have — water ice 
or cream ice ? ” 

“ Water ice. Who is that odd man staring at me— he is 
decore too.” 

“ That is my friend Colonel Altamont, a very queer character, 
in the service of the Nawaub of Lucknow. Hallo! what’s 
that noise. I’ll be back in an instant,” said the Chevalier, and 
sprang out of the room to the ball-room, where a scuffle and a 
noise of high voices was heard. 

The refreshment-room, in which Miss Amory now found 
herself, was a room set apart for the purposes of supper, which 
Mr. Rincer the landlord had provided for those who chose to 
partake, at the rate of five shillings per head. Also, refresh- 
ments of a superior class were here ready for the ladies and 
gentlemen of the county families who came to the ball ; but 
the commoner sort of persons were kept out of the room by a 
waiter who stood at the portal, and who said that was a select 
room for Lady Clavering and Lady Rockminster’s parties, and 
not to be opened to the public till supper-time, which was not 
to be until past midnight. Pynsent, who danced with his con- 
stituents’ daughters, took them and their mammas in for their 
refreshment there. Strong, who was manager and master of 
the revels wherever he went, had of course the entree — and the 
only person who was now occupying the room, was the gentleman 
with the black wig and the orders in his button-hole ; the officer 
in the service of his Highness the Nawaub of Lucknow. 

This gentleman had established himself very early in the 
evening in this apartment, where, saying he was confoundedly 
thirsty, he called for a bottle of champagne. At this order, the 
waiter instantly supposed that he had to do with a grandee, and 
the Colonel sat down and began to eat his supper and absorb 
his drink, and enter affably into conversation with anybody who 
entered the room. 


PENDENNIS. 


269 

Sir Francis Clavering and Mr. Wagg found him there ; when 
they left the ball-room, which they did pretty early — Sir Francis 
to go and smoke a cigar, and look at the people gathered out- 
side the ballroom on the shore, which he declared was much 
better fun than to remain within ; Mr. Wagg to hang on to a 
Baronet’s arm, as he was always pleased to do on the arm of 
the greatest man in the company. Colonel Altamont had stared 
at these gentlemen in so odd a manner, as they passed through 
the “ Select ” room, that Clavering made inquiries of the land- 
lord who he was, and hinted a strong opinion that the officer of 
the Nawaub’s service was drunk. 

Mr. Pynsent, too, had had the honor of a conversation with 
the servant of the Indian potentate. It was Pynsent’s cue to 
speak to everybody ; (which he did, to do him justice, in the most 
ungracious manner ;) and he took the gentleman in the black 
wig for some constituent, some merchant captain, or other out- 
landish man of the place. Mr. Pynsent, then, coming into the 
refreshment-room with a lady, the wife of a constituent, on his 
arm, the Colonel asked him if he would try a glass of Sham ? 
Pynsent took it with great gravity, bowed, tasted the wine, and 
pronounced it excellent, and with the utmost politeness retreated 
before Colonel Altamont. This gravity and decorum routed 
and surprised the Colonel more than any other kind of behavior 
probably would : he stared after Pynsent stupidly, and pro 
nounced to the landlord over the counter that he was a rum 
one. Mr. Rincer blushed, and hardly knew what to say. Mr. 
Pynsent was a country Earl’s grandson, going to set up as a 
Parliament man. Colonel Altamont, on the other hand, wore 
orders and diamonds, jingled sovereigns constantly in his pocket, 
and paid his way like a man; so not knowing what to say, Mr. 
Rincer said, “ Yes, Colonel — yes, ma’am, did you say tea ? Cup 
a tea for Mr. Jones, Mrs. R.,” and so got off that discussion 
regarding Mr. Pynsent’s qualities, into which the Nizam’s officer 
appeared inclined to enter. 

In fact, if the truth must be told, Mr. Altamont, having re- 
mained at the buffet almost all night, and employed himself 
very actively whilst there, had considerably flushed his brain by 
drinking, and he was still going on drinking, when Mr. Strong 
and Miss Amory entered the room. 

When the Chevalier ran out of the apartment, attracted by 
the noise in the dancing-room, the Colonel rose from his chair 
with his little red eyes glowing like coals, and, with rather an 
unsteady gait, advanced towards Blanche, who was sipping her 
ice. She was absorbed in absorbing it, for it was very fresh 


PENDENNIS . 


270 

and good ; or she was not curious to know what was going on 
in the adjoining room, although the waiters were, who ran after 
Chevalier Strong. So that when she looked up from her glass, 
she beheld this strange man staring at her out of his little red 
eyes. “ Who was he ? It was quite exciting.” 

“ And so you’re Betsy Amory,” said he, after gazing at her. 
“ Betsy Amory, by Jove ! ” 

“ Who — who speaks to me ? ” said Betsy, alias Blanche. 

But the noise in the ball-room is really becoming so loud, 
that we must rush back thither, and see what is the cause of 
the disturbance. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

WHICH IS BOTH QUARRELSOME AND SENTIMENTAL 

Civil war was raging, high words passing, people pushing 
and squeezing together in an unseemly manner, round a window 
in the corner of the ball-room, close by the door through which 
the Chevalier Strong shouldered his way. Through the opened 
window, the crowd in the street below was sending up sarcastic 
remarks, such as “ Pitch into him ! ” “ Where’s the police ? ” 

and the like ; and a ring of individuals, among whom Madame 
Fribsby was conspicuous, was gathered round Monsieur Alcide 
Mirobolant on the one side ; whilst several gentlemen and ladies 
surrounded our friend Arthur Pendennis on the other. Strong 
penetrated into this assembly, elbowing by Madame Fribsby, 
who was charmed at the Chevalier’s appearance, and cried, 
“ Save him, save him ! ” in frantic and pathetic accents. 

The cause of this disturbance, it appeared, was the angry 
little chef of Sir Francis Clavering’s culinary establishment. 
Shortly after Strong had quitted the room, and whilst Mr. Pen, 
greatly irate at his downfall in the waltz, which had made him 
look ridiculous in the eyes of the nation, and by Miss Amory’s 
behavior to him, which had still further insulted his dignity, was 
endeavoring to get some coolness of body and temper, by look- 
ing out of window towards the sea, which was sparkling in the 
distance, and murmuring in a wonderful calm — whilst he was 
really trying to compose himself, and owning to himself, perhaps, 
that he had acted in a very absurd and peevish manner during 
the night’ — he felt a hand upon his shoulder ; and, on looking 


PENDENNIS. 


271 


round, beheld, to his utter surprise and horror, that the hand in 
question belonged to Monsieur Mirobolant, whose eyes were 
glaring out of his pale face and ringlets at Mr. Pen. To be 
tapped on the shoulder by a French cook was a piece of famil- 
iarity which made the blood of the Pendennises to boil up in 
the veins of their descendant, and he was astounded, almost 
more than enraged, at such an indignity. 

“You speak French?” Mirobolant said in his own. lan- 
guage, to Pen. 

“ What is that to you, pray ? ” said Pen, in English. 

“ At any rate, you understand it ? ” continued the other, 
with a bow. 

“Yes sir,” said Pen, with a stamp of his foot; “I under- 
stand it pretty well.” 

“ Vous me comprendrez alors, Monsieur Pendennis,” replied 
the other, rolling out his r with Gascon force, “ quand je vous 
dis que vous etes un lache. Monsieur Pendennis — un lache, 
entendez-vous ? ” 

“ What ? ” said Pen, starting round on him. 

“You understand the meaning of the word and its conse- 
quences among men of honor ? ” the artist said, putting his 
hand on his hip, and staring at Pen. 

“ The consequences are, that I will fling you out of win- 
dow, you — impudent scoundrel,” bawled out Mr. Pen ; and 
darting upon the Frenchman, he would very likely have put his 
threat into execution, for the window was at hand, and the 
artist by no means a match for the young gentleman — had not 
Captain Broadfoot and another heavy officer flung themselves 
between the combatants, — had not the ladies begun to scream, 
— had not the fiddles stopped, — had not the crowd of people 
come running in that direction, — had not Laura, with a face of 
great alarm, looked over their heads and asked for Heaven’s 
sake what was wrong — had not the opportune Strong made 
his appearance from the refreshment-room, and found Alcides 
grinding his teeth and jabbering oaths in his Gascon French, 
and Pen looking uncommonly wicked, although trying to appear 
as calm as possible, when the ladies and the crowd came up. 

“What has happened?” Strong asked of the chief, in 
Spanish. 

“ I am Chevalier de Juillet,” said the other, slapping his 
breast, “and he has insulted me.” 

“ What has he said to you ? ” asked Strong. 

“ II m’a appele' — Cuisinier ,” hissed out the little French- 


man, 


272 


PENDENNIS. 


Strong could hardly help laughing. “ Come away with me, 
my poor Chevalier,” he said. “We must not quarrel before 
ladies. Come away ; I will carry your message to Mr. Pen- 
dennis. — The poor fellow is not right in his head,” he whis- 
pered to one or two people about him ; — and others, and anx- 
ious Laura’s face visible amongst these, gathered round Pen 
and asked the cause of the disturbance. 

Pen did not know. “ The man was going to give his arm to 
a young lady, on which I said that he was a cook, and the man 
called me a coward and challenged me to fight. I own I was 
surprised and indignant, that if you gentlemen had not stopped 
me, I should have thrown him out of window,” Pen said. 

“ D him, serve him right, too, — the d impudent 

foreign scoundrel,” the gentlemen said. 

“ I — I’m very sorry if I hurt his feelings, though,” Pen 
added : and Laura was glad to hear him say that ; although 
some of the young bucks said, “No, hang the fellow, — hang 
those impudent foreigners — little thrashing would do them 
good.” 

“You will go and shake hands with him before you go to 
sleep — won’t you, Pen ? ” said Laura, coming up to him. “ For- 
eigners may be more susceptible than we are, and have differ- 
ent manners. If you hurt a poor man’s feelings I am sure 
you would be the first to ask his pardon. Wouldn’t you, dear 
Pen?” 

She looked all forgiveness and gentleness, like an angel, as 
she spoke, and Pen took both her hands, and looked into her 
kind face, and said indeed he would. 

“ How fond that girl is of me ! ” he thought, as she stood 
gazing at him. “ Shall I speak to her now ? No — not now. 
I must have this absurd business with the Frenchman over.” 

Laura asked — Wouldn’t he stop and dance with her ? She 
was as anxious to keep him in the room, as he to quit it. 
“ Won’t you stop and waltz with me, Pen ? I’m not afraid to 
waltz with you.” 

This was an affectionate, but an unlucky speech. Pen saw. 
himself prostrate on the ground, having tumbled over Miss 
Roundle and the dragoon, and flung Blanche up against the 
wall — saw himself on the ground, and all the people laughing 
at him, Laura and Pynsent amongst them. 

“ I shall never dance again,” he replied, with a dark and 
determined face. “ Never. I’m surprised you should ask me.” 

“ Is it because you can’t get Blanche for a partner? ” asked 
Laura, with a wicked, unlucky captiousness. 


PENDENNIS. 


27 3 


“ Because I don’t wish to make a fool of mysell, for othei 
people to laugh at me,” Pen answered — “ for you to laugh at 
me, Laura. I saw you and Pynsent. By Jove ! no man shall 
laugh at me.” 

“ Pen, Pen, don’t be so wicked ! ” cried out the poor girl, 
hurt at the morbid perverseness and savage vanity of Pen. He 
was glaring round in the direction of Mr. Pynsent as if he would 
have liked to engage that gentleman as he had done the. cook. 
“ Who thinks the worse of you for stumbling in a waltz ? ” If 
Laura does, we don’t. “ Why are you so sensitive, and ready to 
think evil ? ” 

Here again, by ill-luck, Mr. Pynsent came up to Laura, and 
said, “ I have it in command from Lady Rockminster to ask 
whether I may take you in to supper ? ” 

“I — I was going in with my cousin,” Laura said. 

“ O — pray, no ! ” said Pen. “ You are in such good hands, 
that I can’t do better than leave you : and I’m going home.” 

“ Good-night, Mr. Pendennis,” Pynsent said, drily — to which 
speech (which in fact, meant, “ Go to the deuce for an insolent, 
jealous, impertinent jackanapes, whose ears I should like to 
box ”) Mr. Pendennis did not vouchsafe any reply, except a 
bow : and, in spite of Laura’s imploring looks, he left the room. 

“ How beautifully calm and bright the night outside is ! ” 
said Mr. Pynsent ; “ and what a murmur the sea is making ! It 
would be pleasanter to be walking on the beach, than in this 
hot room.” 

“ Very,” said Laura. 

“ What a strange congregation of people,” continued Pyn- 
sent.* “ I have had to go up and perform the agreeable to most 
of them — the attorney’s daughters — the apothecary’s wife — I 
scarcely know whom. There was a man in the refreshment- 
room, who insisted upon treating me to champagne — a seafar- 
ing looking man — extraordinarily dressed, and seeming half 
tipsy. As a public man, one is bound to conciliate all these 
people, but it is a hard task — especially when one would so 
very much like to be elsewhere ” — and he blushed rather as he 
spoke. 

“ I beg your pardon,” said Laura — “ I — I was not listening. 
Indeed — I was frightened about that quarrel between my cousin 
and that — that — French person.” 

“ Your cousin has been rather unlucky to-night,” Pynsent 
said. “ There are three or four persons whom he has not suc- 
ceeded in pleasing — Captain Broadwood : what is his name — 
the officer — and the young lady in red with whom he danced — 

18 


PENDENNIS. 


2 74 

and Miss Blanche — and the poor chef — and I don’t think he 
seemed to be particularly pleased with me. 

“ Didn’t he leave me in charge to you ? ” Laura said, look- 
ing up into Mr. Pynsent’s fade, and dropping her eyes instantly, 
like a guilty little story-telling coquette. 

“ Indeed, I can forgive him a good deal for that,” Pynsent 
eagerly cried out, and she took his arm, and he led off his little 
prize in the direction of the supper-room. 

She had no great desire for that repast, though it was served 
in Rincer’s well-known style, as the county paper said, giving 
an account of the entertainment afterwards ; indeed she was 
very distraite ; and exceedingly pained and unhappy about Pen. 
Captious and quarrelsome; jealous and selfish ; fickle and vio- 
lent and unjust when his anger led him astray ; how could her 
mother (as indeed Helen had by a thousand words and hints) 
ask her to give her heart to such a man ? and suppose she 
was to do so, would it make him happy ? 

But she got some relief at length, when, at the end of half 
an hour — a long half-hour it had seemed to her — a waiter 
brought her a little note in pencil from Pen, who said, “ I met 
Cooky below ready to fight me ; and I asked his pardon. I’m 
glad I did it. I wanted to speak to you to-night, but will keep 
what I had to say till you come home. God bless you. Dance 
away all night with Pynsent, and be very happy. Pen.” — 
Laura was very thankful for this letter, and to think that there 
was goodness and forgiveness still in her mother’s boy. 

Pen went down stairs, his heart reproaching him for his ab- 
surd behavior to Laura, whose gentle and imploring looks fol- 
lowed and rebuked him ; and he was scarcely out of the ball- 
room door before he longed to turn back and ask her pardon. 
But he remembered that he had left her with that confounded 
Pynsent. He could not apologize before him. He would com- 
promise and forget his wrath, and make his peace with the 
Frenchman. 

The Chevalier was pacing down below in the hall of the inn 
when Pen descended from the ballroom ; and he came up to 
Pen, with all sorts of fun and mischief lighting up his jolly 
face. 

“ I have got him in the coffee-room,” he said, “ with a brace 
of pistols and a candle. Or would you like swords on the 
beach ? Mirobolant is a dead hand with the foils, and killed 
four gardes-du-corps with his own point in the barricades of July.” 

“ Confound it,” said Pen, in a fury, “ I can’t fight a cook! ” 


PENDENNIS. 


275 

“He is a Chevalier of July,” replied the other. “They 
present arms to him in his own country.” 

“ And do you ask me, Captain Strong, to go out with a ser- 
vant ? ” Pen asked fiercely ; “ I’ll call a policeman for him ; but 
—but — ” 

“You’ll invite me to hair triggers? ” cried Strong, with a 
laugh. “ Thank you for nothing ; I was but joking. I came 
to settle quarrels, not to fight them. I have been soothing 
down Mirobolant ; I have told him that you did not apply the 
word ‘ Cook ’ to him in an offensive sense : that it was contrary 
to all the customs of the country that a hired officer of a house- 
hold, as I called it, should give his arm to the daughter of the 
house.” And then he told Pen the grand secret which he had 
had from Madame Fribsby, of the violent passion under which 
the poor artist was laboring. 

When Arthur heard this tale, he broke out into a hearty 
laugh, in which Strong joined, and his rage against the poor 
cook vanished at once. He had been absurdly jealous himself 
all the evening, and had longed for a pretext to insult Pynsent. 
He remembered how jealous he had been of Oaks in his first 
affair ; he was ready to pardon anything to a man under a pas- 
sion like that : and he went into the coffee-room where Mirobo- 
lant was waiting, with an outstretched hand, and made him a 
speech in French, in which he declared that he was “ Sinckre- 
ment fache d’avoir us£ une expression qui avoit pu blesser 
Monsieur Mirobolant, et qu’il donnoit sa parole comme une 
gentilhomme qu’il ne l’avoit jamais, jamais — intende,” said Pen, 
who made a shot at a French word for “ intended,” and was 
secretly much pleased with his own fluency and correctness in 
speaking that language. 

“ Bravo, bravo ! ” cried Strong, as much amused with Pen’s 
speech as pleased by his kind manner. “ And the Chevalier 
Mirobolant of course withdraws, and sincerely regrets the ex- 
pression of which he made use.” 

“ Monsieur Pendennis has disproved my words himself,” 
said Alcide with great politeness ; “ he has shown that he is a 
galant homme .” 

And so they shook hands and parted, Arthur in the first 
place despatching his note to Laura before he and Strong com- 
mitted themselves to the Butcher Boy. 

As they drove along, Strong complimented Pen upon his 
behavior, as well as upon his skill in French. “ You’re a good 
fellow, Pendennis, and you speak French like Chateaubriand, 
by Jove.” 


PENDENNIS. 


276 

“ I’ve been accustomed to it from my youth upwards,” said 
Pen ; and Strong had the grace not to laugh for five minutes, 
when he exploded into fits of hilarity which Pendennis has 
never, perhaps, understood up to this day. 

It was daybreak when they got to the Brawl, where they 
separated. By that time the ball at Baymouth was over too. 
Madame Fribsby and Mirobolant were on their way home in 
the Clavering fly ; Laura was in bed with an easy heart and 
asleep at Lady Rockminster’s ; and the Claverings at rest at 
the inn at Baymouth, where they had quarters for the night. A 
short time after the disturbance between Pen and the chef, 
Blanche had come out of the refreshment-room, looking as pale 
as a lemon-ice. She told her maid, having no other confidante 
at hand, that she had met with the most romantic adventure — 
the most singular man — one who had known the author of her 
being — her persecuted — her unhappy — her heroic — her mur- 
dered father ; and she began a sonnet to his manes before she 
went to sleep. 

So Pen returned to Fairoaks, in company with his friend 
the Chevalier, without having uttered a word of the message 
which he had been so anxious to deliver to Laura at Baymouth. 
He could wait, however, until her return home, which was to 
take place on the succeeding day. He was not seriously jealous 
of the progress made by Mr. Pynsent in her favor ; and he felt 
pretty certain that in this, as in any other family arrangement, 
he had but to ask and have, and Laura, like his mother, could 
refuse him nothing. 

When Helen’s anxious looks inquired of him what had hap- 
pened at Baymouth, and whether her darling project was ful- 
filled, Pen, in a gay tone, told of the calamity which had be- 
fallen ; laughingly said, that no man could think of declarations 
under such a mishap, and made light of the matter. “ There 
will be plenty of time for sentiment, dear mother, when Laura 
comes back,” he said, and he looked in the glass with a killing 
air, and his mother put his hair off his forehead and kissed 
him, and of course thought, for her part, that no woman could 
resist him ; and was exceedingly happy that day. 

When he was not with her, Mr. Pen occupied himself in 
packing books and portmanteaus, burning and arranging papers, 
cleaning his gun and putting it into its case : in fact, in making 
dispositions for departure. For though he was ready to marry, 
this gentleman was eager to go to London too, rightly consider- 
ing that at three-and-twenty it was quite time for him to begin 


PEND ENNIS. 


277 

upon the serious business of life, and to set about making a 
fortune as quickly as possible. 

The means to this end he had already shaped out for him- 
self. “ I shall take chambers,” he said, “ and enter myself at 
an Inn of Court. With a couple of hundred pounds I shall be 
able to carry through the first year very well ; after that I have 
little doubt my pen will support me, as it is doing with several 
Oxbridge men now in town. I have a tragedy, a comedy, and 
a novel, all nearly finished, and for which I can’t fail to get a 
price. And so I shall be able to live pretty well, without 
drawing upon my poor mother, until I have made my way at the 
bar. Then, some day I will come back and make her dear 
soul happy by marrying Laura. She is as good and as sweet- 
tempered a girl as ever lived, besides being really very good- 
looking, and the engagement will serve to steady me, — won’t it, 
Ponto ? ” Thus, smoking his pipe, and talking to his dog as he 
sauntered through the gardens and orchards of the little domain 
of Fairoaks, this young day-dreamer built castles in the air for 
himself : “Yes, she’ll steady me, won’t she? And you’ll miss 
me when I’ve gone, won’t you, old boy?” he asked of Ponto, 
who quivered his tail and thrust his brown nose into his 
master’s fist. Ponto licked his hand and shoe, as they all did 
in that house, and Mr. Pen received their homage as other folks 
do the flattery which they get. 

Laura came home rather late in the evening of the second 
day ; and Mr. Pynsent, as ill luck would have it, drove her 
from Clavering. The poor girl could not refuse his offer, but 
his appearance brought a dark cloud upon the brow of Arthur 
Pendennis. Laura saw this, and was pained by it : the eager 
widow, however, was aware of nothing, and being anxious, 
doubtless, that the delicate question should be asked at once, 
was for going to bed very soon after Laura’s arrival, and rose 
for that purpose to leave the sofa where she now generally lay, 
and where Laura would come and sit and work or read by her. 
But when Helen rose, Laura said, with a blush and rather an 
alarmed voice, that she was also very tired and wanted to go to 
bed : so that the widow was disappointed in her scheme for 
that night at least, and Mr. Pen was left another day in suspense 
regarding his fate. 

His dignity was offended at being thus obliged to remain in 
the antechamber when he wanted an audience. Such a sultan 
as he, could not afford to be kept waiting. However he went to 
bed and slept upon his disappointment pretty comfortably, and 
did not wake until .the early morning, when he looked up and 
saw his mother standing in his room. 


PENDENNIS. 


278 

“ Dear Pen, rouse up,” said this lady. “ Do not be lazy. It 
is the most beautiful morning in the world. I have not been 
able to sleep since day^break ; and Laura has been out for an 
hour. She is in the garden. Everybody ought to be in the 
garden and out on such a morning as this.” 

Pen laughed. He saw what thoughts were uppermost in 
the simple woman’s heart. His good-natured laughter cheered 
the widow. “ Oh you profound dissembler,” he said, kissing 
his mother. “ Oh you artful creature ! Can nobody escape 
from your wicked tricks ? and will you make your only son 
your victim ? ” Helen too laughed, she blushed, she fluttered, 
and was agitated. She was as happy as she could be — a good, 
tender, match-making woman, the dearest project of whose 
heart was about to be accomplished. 

So, after exchanging some knowing looks and hasty words, 
Helen left Arthur ; and this young hero, rising from his bed, 
proceeded to decorate his beautiful person, and shave his 
ambrosial chin ; and in half an hour he issued out from his 
apartment into the garden in quest of Laura. His reflections 
as he made his toilette were rather dismal. “ I am goingto tie 
myself for life,” he thought, “ to please my mother. Laura is 
the best of women, and — and she has given me her money. I 
wish to Heaven I had not received it ; I wish I had not this 
duty to perform just yet. But as both the women have set 
their hearts on the match, why I suppose I must satisfy them — 
and now for it. A man may do worse than make happy two of 
the best creatures in the world.” So Pen, now he was actually 
come to the point, felt very grave, and by no means elated, 
and, indeed, thought it was a great sacrifice he was going to 
perform. 

It was Miss Laura’s custom, upon her garden excursions, 
to wear a sort of uniform, which, though homely, was thought 
by many people to be not unbecoming. She had a large straw 
hat, with a streamer of broad ribbon, which was useless proba- 
bly, but the hat sufficiently protected the owner’s pretty face 
from the sun. Over her accustomed gown she wore a blouse 
or pinafore, which, being fastened round her little waist by a 
smart belt, looked extremely well, and her hands were guaran- 
teed from the thorns of her favorite rose-bushes by a pair of 
gauntlets, which gave this young lady a military and resolute 
air. 

Somehow she had the very same smile with which she had 
laughed at him on the night previous, and the recollection of 
his disaster again offended Pen. But Laura, though she saw 


PENDENNIS. 


279 

him coming down the walk looking so gloomy and full of care 
accorded to him a smile of the most perfect and provoking 
good-humor, and went to meet him, holding one of the gaunt- 
lets to him, so that he might shake it if he liked — and Mr. Pen 
condescended to do so. His face, however, did not lose its 
tragic expression in consequence of this favor, and he continued 
to regard her with dismal and solemn air. 

“ Excuse my glove,” said Laura, with a laugh, pressing Pen’s 
hand kindly with it. “ We are not angry again, are we, Pen ? ” 

“Why do you laugh at me ?” said Pen. “You did the 
other night, and made a fool of me to the people at Baymouth.” 

“ My dear Arthur, I meant you no wrong,” the girl answered. 
“You and Miss Roundle looked so droll as you — as you met 
with your little accident, that I could not make a tragedy of it. 
Dear Pen, it wasn’t a serious fall. And, besides, it was Miss 
.Roundle who was the most unfortunate.” 

“ Confound Miss Roundle ! ” bellowed out Pen. 

“ I’m sure she looked so,” said Laura, archly. “You were 
up in an instant ; but that poor lady sitting on the ground in 
her red crape dress, and looking about her with tl^at piteous 
face — can I ever forget her ? ” — and Laura began to make a 
face in imitation of Miss Roundle’s under the disaster, but 
she checked herself repentantly, saying, “ Well, we must not 
laugh at her, but I am sure we ought to laugh at you, Pen, if 
you were angry about such a trifle.” 

“ You should not laugh at me, Laura,” said Pen, with some 
bitterness ; “ not you, of all people.” 

“ And why not ? Are you such a great man ? ” asked 
Laura. 

“Ah no, Laura, I’m such a poor one,” Pen answered. 
“ Haven’t you baited me enough already ? ” 

“ My dear Pen, and how ? ” cried Laura. “ Indeed, indeed, 
I didn’t think to vex you by such a trifle. I thought such a 
clever man as you could bear a harmless little joke from his 
sister,” she said, holding her hand out again. “ Dear Arthur, 
if I have hurt you, I beg your pardon.” 

“ It is your kindness that humiliates me more even than 
your laughter, Laura,” Pen said. “You are always my 
superior.” 

“ What ! superior to the great Arthur Pendennis ? How can 
it be possible ? ” said Miss Laura, who may have had a little 
wickedness as well as a great deal of kindness in her composi- 
tion. “ You can’t mean that any woman is your equal ? ” 

“ Those who confer benefits should not sneer,” said Pen. 


280 


PENDENNIS. 


“ I don’t like my benefactor to laugh at me, Laura ; it makes 
the obligation very hard to bear. You scorn me because I 
have taken your money, and I am worthy, to be scorned ; but 
the blow is hard coming from you.” 

“ Money ! Obligation ! For shame, Pen ; this is ungen- 
erous,” Laura said, flushing red. “ May not your mother claim 
everything that belongs to us ? Don’t I owe her all my happi- 
ness in this world, Arthur ? What matters about a few paltry 
guineas, if we can set her tender heart at rest, and ease her 
mind regarding you ? I would dig in the fields, I would go out 
and be a servant — I would die for her. You know I would,” 
said Miss Laura, kindling up ; “ and you call this paltry money 
an obligation ? Oh, Pen, it’s cruel — it’s unworthy of you to 
take it so ! If my brother may not share with me my superflu- 
ity, who may ? — Mine ? — I tell you it was not mine ; it was all 
mamma’s to do with as she chose, and so is everything I have,” 
said Laura ; “ my life is hers.” And the enthusiastic girl 
looked towards the windows of the widow’s room, and blessed 
in her heart the kind creature within. 

Helen# was looking, unseen, out of that window towards 
which Laura’s eyes and heart were turned as she spoke, and 
was watching her two children with the deepest interest and 
emotion, longing and hoping that the prayer of her life might 
be fufilled ; and if Laura had spoken as Helen hoped, who 
knows what temptations Arthur Pendennis might have been 
spared, or what different trials he would have had to undergo ? 
He might have remained at Fairoaks all his days, and died a 
country gentleman. But would he have escaped then ? Tempta- 
tion is an obsequious servant that had has no objection to the 
country, and we know that it takes up its lodging in hermitages 
as well as in cities ; and that in the most remote and inaccessi- 
ble desert it keeps company with the fugitive solitary. 

“ Is your life my mother’s,” said Pen, beginning to tremble 
and speak in a very agitated manner. “ You know Laura, what 
the great object of hers is ? ” And he took her hand once more. 

“ What, Arthur ? ” she said, dropping it, and looking at him, 
at the window again, and then dropping her eyes to the ground, 
so that they avoided Pen’s gaze. She, too, trembled, for she 
felt that the crisis for which she had been secretly preparing 
was come. 

“ Our mother has one wish above all others in the world, 
Laura,” Pen said, “ and I think you know it. I own to you 
that she has spoken to me of it ; and if you will fulfil it, dear 
sister, I am ready. I am but very young as yet ; but I have 


PEND ENNIS. 


281 


had so many pains and disappointments, tnat I am old and 
weary. I think I have hardly got a heart to offer. Before 1 
have almost begun the race of life, I am a tired man. My 
career has been a failure ; I have been protected by those 
whom I by right should have protected. I own that your 
nobleness and generosity, dear Laura, shame me, whilst they 
render me grateful. When I heard from our mother what 
you had done for me : that it was you who armed me and bade 
me go out for. one struggle more ♦ I longed to go and throw 
myself at your feet, and say, ‘ Laura, will you come and share 
the contest with me? Your sympathy will cheer me while it 
lasts. I shall have one of the tenderest and most generous crea- 
tures under heaven to aid and bear me company.’ Will you 
take me, dear Laura, and make our mother happy ? ” 

“ Do you think mamma would be happy if you were other- 
wise, Arthur ? ” Laura said in a low sad voice. 

“ And why should I not be,” asked Pen eagerly, “ with so 
dear a creature as you by my side ? I have not my first love to 
give you. I am a broken man. But indeed I would love you 
fondly and truly. I have lost many an illusion and ambition, 
but I am not without hope still. Talents I 'know I have, 
wretchedly as I have misapplied them : they may serve me yet : 
they would, had I a motive for action. Let me go away and 
think that I am pledged to return to you. Let me go and work, 
and hope that you will share my success if I gain it. You have 
given me so much, dear Laura, will you take from me nothing ? ” 

“ What have you got to give, Arthur ? ” Laura said, with a 
grave sadness of tone, which made Pen start, and see that his 
words had committed him. Indeed, his declaration had not 
been such as he would have made it two days earlier, when, full 
of hope and gratitude, he had run over to Laura, his liberatress, 
to. thank her for his recovered freedom. Had he been per- 
mitted to speak then, he had spoken, and she, perhaps, had 
listened differently. It would have been a grateful heart ask- 
ing for hers ; not a weary one offered to her, to take or to 
leave. Laura was offended with the terms in which Pen offered 
himself to her. He had, in fact, said that he had no love, and 
yet would take no denial. “ I give myself to you to please my 
mother,” he said : “take me as she wishes that I should make 
this sacrifice.” The girl’s spirit would brook a husband under 
no such conditions : she was not minded to run forward because 
Pen chose to hold out the handkerchief, and her tone, in reply 
to Arthur, showed her determination to be independent. 

“No, Arthur,” she said, “our marriage would not make 


282 


PENDENNIS. 


mamma happy, as she fancies ; for it would not content you 
very long. I, too, have known what her wishes were ; for she 
is too open to conceal anything she has at heart : and once, 
perhaps, I thought — but that is over now — that I could have 
made you — that it might have been as she wished.” 

“ You have seen somebody else,” said Pen, angry at her 
tone, and recalling the incidents of the past days. 

“ That allusion might have been spared,” Laura replied, 
flinging up her head. “ A heart which has worn out love at 
three-and-twenty, as yours has, you say, should have survived 
jealousy too. I do not condescend to say whether I have seen 
or encouraged any other person. I shall neither admit the 
charge nor deny it : and beg you also to allude to it no more.” 

“ I ask your pardon, Laura, if I have offended you : but if 
I am jealous, does it not prove that I have a heart ? ” 

“ Not for me, Arthur. Perhaps you think you love me now : 
but it is only for an instant, and because you are foiled. Were 
there no obstacle, you would feel no ardor to overcome it. No, 
Arthur, you don’t love me. You would weary of me in three 
months, as — as you do of most things ; and mamma, seeing 
you tired of me, would be more unhappy than at my refusal to 
be yours. Let us be brother and sister, Arthur, as heretofore 
— but no more. You will get over this little disappointment.” 

“ I will try,” said Arthur, in a great indignation. 

“ Have you not tried before ? ” Laura said, with some anger, 
for she had been angry with Arthur for a very long time, and 
was now determined, I suppose, to speak her mind. “ And the 
next time, Arthur, when you offer yourself to a woman, do not 
say as you have done to me, ‘ I have no heart — I do not love 
you ; but I am ready to marry you because my mother wishes 
for the match.’ We require more than this in return for our 
love — that is, I think so. I have had no experience hitherto, 
and have not had the — the practice which you supposed me to 
have, when you spoke but now of my having seen somebody 
else. Did you tell your first love that you had no heart, Ar- 
thur ? or your second that you did not love her, but that she 
might have you if she liked ? ” 

“ What — what do you mean ? ” asked Arthur, blushing, and 
still in great wrath. 

“ I mean Blanche Amory, Arthur Pendennis,” Laura said, 
proudly. “ It is but two months since you were sighing at her 
feet — making poems to her — placing them in hollow trees by 
the riverside. I knew all. I watched you — that is, she showed 
them to me. Neither one nor the other were in earnest per- 


PENDENNIS. 


283 

haps ; but it is too soon now, Arthur, to begin a new attach* 
ment. Go through the time of your — your widowhood at least, 
and do not think of marrying until you are out of mourning.” 
— (Here the girl’s eyes filled with tears, and she passed her 
hand across them.) “ I am angry and hurt, and I have no 
right to be so, and I ask your pardon in my turn now, dear Ar- 
thur. You had a right to love Blanche. She was a thousand 
times prettier and more accomplished than — than any girl near 
us here ; and you could not know that she had no heart ; and 
so you were right to leave her too. I ought not to rebuke you 
about Blanche Amory, and because she deceived you. Pardon 
me, Pen,” — and she held the kind hand out to Pen once more. 

“ We were both jealous,” said Pen. “ Dear Laura, let us 
both forgive ” — and he seized her hand and would have drawn 
her towards him. He thought that she was relenting, and 
already assumed the airs of a victor. 

But she shrank back, and her tears passed away ; and she 
fixed on him a look so melancholy and severe, that the young 
man in his turn shrunk before it. “ Do not mistake me, Ar- 
thur,” she said, “ it cannot be. You do not know what you 
ask, and do not be too angry with me for saying that I think 
you do not deserve it. What do you offer in exchange to a 
woman for her love, honor, and obedience? If ever I say 
these words, dear Pen, I hope to say them in earnest, and by 
the blessing of God to keep my vow. But you — what tie binds 
you? You do not care about many things which we poor wo- 
men hold sacred. I do not like to think or ask how far your 
incredulity leads you. You offer to marry to please our mother, 
and own that you have no heart to give away. Oh, Arthur, 
what is it you offer me ? What a rash compact would you enter 
into so lightly? A month ago, and you would have given your- 
self to another. I pray you do not trifle with your own or others’ 
hearts so recklessly. Go and work ; go and mend, dear Ar- 
thur, for I see your faults, and dare speak of them now : go 
and get fame, as you say that you can, and I will pray for my 
brother, and watch our dearest mother at home.” 

“ Is that your 'final decision, Laura ? ” Arthur cried. 

“ Yes,” said Laura, bowing her head ; and once more giving 
him her hand, she went away. He saw her pass under the 
creepers of the little porch, and disappear into the house. The 
Curtains of his mother’s window fell at the same minute, but 
he did not mark that, or suspect that Helen had been witness- 
ing the scene. 

Was he pleased, or was he angry at its termination ? He 


PENDENNIS. 


284 

had asked her, and a secret triumph filled his heart to think 
that he was still free. She had refused him, but did she not 
love him ? That avowal of jealousy made him still think that 
her heart was his own, whatever her lips might utter. 

And now we ought, perhaps, to describe another scene 
which took place at Fairoaks, between the widow and Laura, 
when the latter had to tell Helen that she had refused Arthur 
Pendennis. Perhaps it was the hardest task of all which Laura 
had to go through in this matter : and the one which gave her 
the most pain. But as we do not like to see a good woman 
unjust, we shall not say a word more of the quarrel which now 
befell between Helen and her adopted daughter, or of the bitter 
tears which the poor girl was made to shed. It was the only 
difference which she and the widow had ever had as yet, and 
the more cruel from this cause. Pen left home whilst it was as 
yet pending — and Helen, who could pardon almost everything, 
could not pardon an act of justice in Laura 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

BABYLON. 

Our reader must now please to quit the woods and sea- 
shore of the west, and the gossip of Clavering, and the hum- 
drum life of poor little Fairoaks, and transport himself with 
Arthur Pendennis, on the “ Alacrity ” coach, to London, - 
whither he goes once for all to face the world and to make his 
fortune. As the coach whirls through the night away from the 
friendly gates of home, many a plan does the young man cast 
in his mind of future life and conduct, prudence, and perad- 
venture success and fame. He knows he is a better man than 
many who have hitherto been ahead of him in the race : his 
first failure has caused him remorse, and brought with it reflec- 
tion ; it has not taken away his courage, or, let us add, his good 
opinion of himself. A hundred eager fancies and busy hopes 
keep him awake. How much older his mishaps and a year’s 
thought and self-communion have made him, than when, twelve 
months since, he passed on this road on his way to and from 
Oxbridge ! His thoughts turn in the night with inexpressible 
fondness and tenderness towards the fond mother, who blessed 


PENDENNIS. 


285 

him when parting, and who, in spite of all his past faults and 
follies, trusts him and loves him still. Blessings be on her ! 
he prays, as he looks up to the stars overhead. O Heaven, 
give him strength to work, to endure, to be honest, to avoid 
temptation, to be worthy of the loving soul who loves him so 
entirely ! Very likely she is awake too, at that moment, and 
sending up to the same Father purer prayers than his for the 
welfare of her boy. That woman’s love is a talisman by which 
he holds and hopes to get his safety. And Laura’s — he would 
have fain carried her affection with him too, but she has denied 
it, as he is not worthy of it. He owns as much with shame and 
remorse ; confesses how much better and loftier her nature is 
than his own — confesses it, and yet is glad to be free. “ I am 
not good enough for such a creature,” he owns to himself. He 
draws back before her spotless beauty and innocence, as from 
something that scares him. He feels he is not fit for such a 
mate as that ; as many a wild prodigal who has been pious and 
guiltless in early days, keeps away from a church which he used 
to frequent once — shunning it, but not hostile to it — only feel- 
ing that he has no right in that pure place. 

With these thoughts to occupy him, Pen did not fall asleep 
until the nipping dawn of an October morning, and woke con- 
siderably refreshed when the coach stopped at the old break- 
fasting place at B , where he had had a score of merry 

meals on his way to and from school and college many times 
since he was a boy. As they left that place, the sun broke out 
brightly, the pace was rapid, the horn blew, the milestones flew 
by, Pen smoked and joked with guard and fellow-passengers 
and people along the familiar road ; it grew more busy and ani- 
mated at every instant ; the last team of greys came out at 

H , and the coach drove into London. What young fellow 

has not felt a thrill as he entered the vast place ? Hundreds of 
other carriages, crowded with their thousands of men, were 
hastening to the great city. “ Here is my place,” thought Pen ; 
“ here is my battle beginning, in which I must fight and conquer, 
or fall. I have been a boy and a dawdler as yet. Oh, I long, 
I long to show that I can be a man.” And from his place on 
the coach-roof the eager young fellow looked down upon the 
City, with the sort of longing desire which young soldiers feel 
on the eve of a campaign. 

As they came along the road, Pen had formed acquaintance 
with a cheery fellow-passenger in a shabby cloak, who talked a 
great deal about men of letters with whom he was very familiar, 
and who was, in fact, the reporter of a London newspaper, as 


286 


PENDENNIS. 


whose representative he had been to attend a great wrestling- 
match in the west. This gentleman knew intimately, as it ap- 
peared, all the leading men of letters of his day, and talked 
about Tom Campbell and Tom Hood, and Sydney Smith, and 
this and the other, as if he had been their most intimate friend. 
As they passed by Brompton, this gentleman pointed out to 
Pen Mr. Hurtle, the reviewer, walking with his umbrella. Per? 
craned over the coach to have a long look at the great Hurtle. 
He was a Boniface man, said Pen. And Mr. Doolan, of the 
‘Tom and Jerry’ newspaper (for such was the gentleman’s 
name and address upon the card which he handed to Pen), said 
“ Faith he was, and he knew him very well.” Pen thought it 
was quite an honor to have seen the great Mr. Hurtle, whose 
works he admired. He believed fondly, as yet, in authors, re- 
viewers and editors of newspapers. Even Wagg, whose books 
did not appear to him to be masterpieces of human intellect, he 
yet secretly revered as a successful writer. He mentioned that 
he had met Wagg in the country, and Doolan told him how 
that famous novelist received three hundther pounds a volume 
for every one of his novels. Pen began to calculate instantly 
whether he might not make five thousand a year. 

The very first acquaintance of his own whom Arthur met, 
as the coach pulled up at the Gloster Coffee-House, was his old 
friend Harry Foker, who came prancing “down Arlington Street 
behind an enormous cab-horse. He had white kid gloves and 
white reins, and nature had by this time decorated him with a 
considerable tuft on the chin. A very small cab-boy, vice Stoo- 
pid retired, swung on behind Foker’s vehicle ; knock-kneed and 
in the tightest leather breeches. Foker looked at the dusty 
coach, and the smoking horses of the “ Alacrity ” by which he 
had made journeys in former times. — “ What, Foker ! ” cried 
out Pendennis — “ Hullo ! Pen, my boy ! ” said the other, and 
he waved his whip by way of amity and salute to Arthur, who 
was very glad to see his queer friend’s kind old face. Mr. 
Doolan had a great respect for Pen who had an acquaintance 
in such a grand cab ; and Pen was greatly excited and pleased 
to be at liberty and in London. He asked Doolan to come and 
dine with him at the Covent Garden Coffee-House, where he 
put up : he called a cab and rattled away thither in the highest 
spirits. Pie was glad to see the bustling waiter and polite bow- 
ing landlord again ; and asked for the landlady, and missed the 
old Boots, and would have liked to shake hands with everybody. 
He had a hundred pounds in his pocket. He dressed himself 
in his very best ; dined in the coffee-room with a modest pint 


PENDENNIS. 287 

of sherry (for he was determined to be very economical), and 
went to the theatre adjoining. 

The lights and the music, the crowd and the gayety, charmed 
and exhilarated Pen, as those sights will do young fellows from 
college and the country, to whom they are tolerably new. He 
laughed at the jokes ; he applauded the songs, to the delight of 
some of the dreary old habitues of the boxes', who had ceased 
long ago to find the least excitement in their place of nightly 
resort, and were pleased to see any one so fresh, and so much 
amused. At the end of the first piece, he went and strutted 
about the lobbies of the theatre, as if he was in a resort of the 
highest fashion. What tired frequenter of the London pave is 
there that cannot remember having had similar early delusions, 
and would not call them back again ? Here was young Foker 
again, like an ardent votary of pleasure as he was. He was 
walking with Granby Tiptoff, of the Household Brigade, Lord 
Tiptoff’s brother, and Lord Colchicum, Captain Tiptoff’s uncle, 
a venerable peer, who had been a man of pleasure since the 
first French Revolution.* Foker rushed upon Pen with eager- 
ness, and insisted that the latter should come into his private 
box, where a lady with the longest ringlets, and the fairest 
shoulders, was seated. This was Miss Blenkinsop, the eminent 
actress of high comedy ; and in the back of the box snoozing in 
a wig, sat old Blenkinsop, her papa. He was described in the 
theatrical prints as the “ veteran Blenkinsop ” — “ the useful 
Blenkinsop” — “that old favorite of the public, Blenkinsop : ” 
those parts in the drama, which are called the heavy fathers, 
were usually assigned to this veteran, who, indeed, acted the 
heavy father in public, as in private life. 

At this time, it being about eleven o’clock, Mrs. Pendennis 
was gone to bed at Fairoaks, and wondering whether her dear- 
est Arthur was at rest after his journey. At this time Laura, 
too, was awake. And at this time yesterday night, as the 
coach rolled over silent commons, where cottage windows 
twinkled, and by darkling woods under calm starlit skies, Pen was 
vowing to reform and to resist temptation, and his heart was at 
home * * * * Meanwhile the farce was going on very success- 
fully, and Mrs. Leary, in a hussar jacket and braided panta- 
loons, was enchanting the audience with her archness, her 
lovely figure, and her delightful ballads. 

Pen, being new to the town, would have liked to listen to 
Mrs. Leary ; but the other people in the box did not care about 
her song or her pantaloons, and kept up an incessant chatter 
ing. Tiptoff knew where her maillots came from. Colchicum 


288 


PENDENNIS. 


saw her when she came out in ’14. Miss Blenkinsop said she 
sang out of all tune, to the pain and astonishment of Pen, who 
thought that she was as beautiful as an angel, and that she sang 
like a nightingale ; and when Hoppus came on as Sir Harcourt 
Featherby, the young man of the piece, the gentlemen in the 
box declared that Hoppus was getting too stale, and Tiptoff 
was for flinging Miss Blenkinsop’s bouquet to him. 

“Not for the world,” cried the daughter of the veteran 
Blenkinsop ; “ Lord Colchicum gave it to me. 

Pen remembered that nobleman’s name, and with a bow and 
a blush said he believed he had to thank Lord Colchicum for 
having proposed him at the Polyanthus Club, at the request of 
his uncle Major Pendennis 

“ What, you’re Wigsby’s nephew, are you ? ” said the peer. 
“ I beg your pardon, we always call him Wigsby.” Pen blushed 
to hear his venerable uncle called by such a familiar name. 
“ We balloted you in last week, didn’t we ? Yes, last Wednes- 
day night. Your uncle wasn’t there.” 

Here was delightful news for Pen ! He professed himself 
very much obliged indeed to Lord Colchicum, and made him a 
handsome speech of thanks, to which the other listened with his 
double opera-glass up to his eyes. Pen was full* of excitement 
at the idea of being a member of this polite Club. 

“ Don’t be always looking at that box, you naughty creature,” 
cried Miss Blenkinsop. 

“ She’s a dev’lish fine woman, that Mirabel,” said Tiptoff ; 
“ though Mirabel was a d — d fool to marry her.” 

“A stupid old spooney,” said the peer. 

“Mirabel! ” cried out Pendennis. 

“ Ha ! ha ! ” laughed out Harry Foker. “We’ve heard of 
her before, haven’t we, Pen ? ” 

It was Pen’s first love. It was Miss Fotheringay. The 
year before she had been led to the altar by Sir Charles Mirabel, 
G.C.B,, and formerly envoy to the Court of Pumpernickel, who 
had taken so active a part in the negotiations before the Con- 
gress of Swammerdan, and signed, on behalf of H. B. M., the 
Peace of Pultusk. 

“ Emily was always as stupid as an owl,” said Miss Blen- 
kinsop. 

“ Eh ! Eh ! pas si bete,” the old Peer said. 

“ Oh, for shame ! ” cried the actress, who did not in the 
least know what he meant. 

And Pen looked out and beheld his first love once again— 
and wondered how he ever could have loved her. 



ARTHUR MEETS WITH AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE. 










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H a$ 5 


























PENDENNIS. 


289 

Thus, on the very first night of his arrival in London, Mr. 
Arthur Pendennis found himself introduced to a Club, to an 
actress of genteel comedy and a heavy father of the Stage, and 
to a dashing society of jovial blades, old and young ; for my 
Lord Colchicum, though stricken in years, bald of head, and 
enfeebled in person, was still indefatigable in the pursuit of 
enjoyment, and it was the venerable Viscount’s boast that he 
could drink as much claret as the youngest member of the 
society which he frequented. He lived with the youth about 
town : he gave them countless dinners at Richmond and Green- 
wich : an enlightened patron of the drama in all languages and 
of the Terpsichorean art, he received dramatic professors of all 
nations at his banquets — English from the Covent Garden and 
Strand houses, Italians from the Haymarket, French from their 
own pretty little theatre, or the boards of the Opera where they 
danced. And at his villa on the Thames, this pillar of the State 
gave sumptuous entertainments to scores of young men of 
fashion, who very affably consorted with the ladies and gentle- 
men of the green-room — with the former chiefly, for Viscount 
Colchicum preferred their society as more polished and gay 
than that of their male brethren. 

Pen went the next day and paid his entrance money at the 
Club, which operation carried off exactly one third of his 
hundred pounds : and took possession of the edifice, and ate 
his luncheon there with immense satisfaction. He plunged 
into an easy chair in the library, and tried to read all the 
magazines. He wondered whether the members were looking 
at him, and that they could dare to keep on their hats in such 
fine rooms. He sat down and wrote a letter to Fairoaks on 
the Club paper, and said, what a comfort this place would be 
to him after his day’s work was over. He went over to his 
uncle’s lodgings in Bury Street with some considerable tremor, 
and in compliance with his mother’s earnest desire, that he 
should instantly call on Major Pendennis ; and was not a little 
relieved to find that the Major had not yet returned to town. 
His apartments were blank. Brown Hollands covered his 
library-table, and bills and letters lay on the mantel-piece, 
grimly awaiting the return of their owner. The Major was on 
the continent, the landlady of the house said, at Badn Badn, 
with the Marcus of Steyne. Pen left his card upon the shelf 
with the rest. Fairoaks was written on it still. When the 
Major return to London, which he did in time for the fogs of 
November, after enjoying which he proposed to spend Christ- 
mas with some friends in the country, he found another card 

J 9 


290 


PENDENNIS. 


of Arthur’s on which Lamb Court, Temple, was engraved, and 
a note from that young gentleman and from his mother, stating 
that he was come to town, was entered a member of the Upper 
Temple, and was reading hard for the bar. 

Lamb Court, Temple : — where was it ? Major Pendennis 
remembered that some ladies of fashion used to talk of dining 
with Mr. Ayliffe, the barrister, who was in “society,” and who 
lived there in the King’s Bench, of which prison there was 
probably a branch in the Temple, and Ayliffe was very likely 
an officer. Mr. Deuceace, Lord Crabs’s son, had also lived 
there, he recollected. He dispatched Morgan to find out where 
Lamb Court was, and to report upon the lodging selected by 
Mr. Arthur. That alert messenger had little difficulty in 
discovering Mr. Pen’s abode. Discreet Morgan had in his 
time traced people far more difficult to find than Arthur. 

“ What sort of a place is it, Morgan ? ” asked the Major 
out of the bed-curtains in Bury Street the next morning, as the 
valet w.as arranging his toilette in the deep yellow London fog. 

“ I should say rayther a shy place,” said Mr. Morgan. 
“ The lawyers lives there, and has their names on the doors. 
Mr. Harthur lives three pair high, sir. Mr. Warrington lives 
there too, sir.” 

“ Suffolk Warringtons ! I shouldn’t wonder : a good family,” 
thought the Major. “ The cadets of many of our good families 
follow the robe as a profession. Comfortable rooms, eh ? ” 

“ Honly saw the outside of the door, sir, with Mr. Warring- 
ton’s name and Mr. Arthur’s painted up, and a piece of paper 
with ‘ Back at 6 ; ’ but I couldn’t see no servant, sir.” 

“ Economical at any rate,” said the Major. 

“Very, sir. Three pair, sir. Nasty black staircase as ever 
I see. Wonder how a gentleman can live in such a place.” 

“ Pray, who taught you where gentlemen should or should 
not live, Morgan ? Mr. Arthur, sir, is going to study for the 
bar, sir ; ” the Major said with much dignity ; and closed the 
conversation and began to array himself in the yellow fog. 

“ Boys will be boys,” the mollified uncle thought to him- 
self. “ He has written to me a devilish good letter. Colchicum 
says he has had him to dine, and thinks him a gentlemanlike lad. 
His mother is one of the best creatures in the world. If he 
has sown his wild oats, and will stick to his business, he may 
do well yet. Think of Charley Mirabel, the old fool, marry- 
ing thatflame of his ; that Fotheringay ! He doesn’t like to 
come here till I give him leave, and puts it in a very manly 
nice way. I was deuced angry with him, after his Oxbridge 


PENDENNIS. 


291 

escapades — and showed it, too, when he was here before — Gad, 
I’ll go and see him, hang me, if I don’t.” 

And having ascertained from Morgan that he could reach 
the Temple without much difficulty, and that a city omnibus 
would put him down at the gate, the Major one day after 
breakfast at his Club — not the Polyanthus, whereof Mr. Pen 
was just elected a member, but another Club : for the Major 
was too wise to have a nephew as a constant inmate of any 
house where he was in the habit of passing his time — the 
Major one day entered one of those public vehicles, and bade 
the conductor to put him down at the gate of the Upper 
Temple. 

When Major Pendennis reached that dingy portal it was 
about twelve o’clock jn the day ; and he was directed by a 
civil personage with a badge and a white apron, through some 
dark alleys, and under various melancholy archways into courts 
each more dismal than the other, until finally he reached Lamb 
Court. If it was dark in Pall Mall, what was it in Lamb Court ? 
Candles were burning in many of the rooms there — in the pupil- 
room of Mr. Hodgeman, the special pleader, whose six pupils 
were scribbing declarations under the tallow ; in Sir Hokey 
Walker’s clerk’s room, where the clerk, a person far more gen- 
tlemanlike and cheerful in appearance than the celebrated 
counsel, his master, was conversing in a patronizing manner 
with the managing clerk of an attorney at the door ; and in 
Curling, the wig-maker’s melancholy shop, where, from behind 
the feeble glimmer of a couple of lights, large sergeants’ and 
judges’ wigs were looming drearily, with the blank blocks looking 
at the lamp-post in the court. Two little clerks were playing 
at toss-halfpenny under that lamp. A laundress in pattens 
passed in at one door, a newspaper boy issued from another. 
A porter, whose white apron was faintly visible, paced up and 
down. It would be impossible to conceive a place more dismal, 
and the Major shuddered to think that any one should select 
such a residence. “ Good Ged ! ” he said, “ the poor boy mustn’t 
live on here.” 

The feeble and filthy oil-lamps, with which the staircases of 
the Upper Temple are lighted of nights, were of course not 
illuminating the stairs by day, and Major Pendennis, having 
read with difficulty his nephew’s name under Mr. Warrington’s 
on the wall of No. 6, found still greater difficulty in climbing the 
abominable black stairs, up the banisters of which, which con- 
tributed their damp exudations to his gloves, he groped painfully 
until he came to the third story. A candle was in the pas* 


292 


PENDENNIS. 


sage of one of the two sets of rooms : the doors were open, 
and the names of Mr. Warrington and Mr. A. Pendennis were 
very clearly visible to the Major as he went in. An Irish char- 
woman, with a pail and broom, opened the door for the Major. 

“ Is that the beer ? ” cried out a great voice : “ give us hold 
of it.” 

The gentleman who was speaking was seated on a table, 
unshorn and smoking a short pipe ; in a farther chair sat Pen, 
with a cigar, and his legs near the fire. A little boy, who acted 
as the clerk of these gentlemen, was grinning in the Major’s 
face, at the idea of his being mistaken for beer. Here, upon 
the third floor, the rooms were somewhat lighter, and the 
Major could see the place. 

■“ Pen, my boy, it’s I — it’s your uncle,” he said, choking 
with the smoke. But as most young men of fashion used the 
weed he pardoned the practice easily enough. 

Mr. Warrington got up from the table, and Pen, in a very 
perturbed manner, from his chair. “Beg your pardon for 
mistaking you,” said Warrington, in a frank, loud voice. “Will 
you take a cigar, sir? Clear those things off the chair, Pid- 
geon, and pull it round to the fire.” 

Pen flung his cigar into the grate ; and was pleased with 
the cordiality with which his uncle shook him by the hand. 
As soon as he could speak for the stairs and the smoke, the 
Major began to ask Pen very kindly about himself and about 
his mother ; for blood is blood, and he was pleased once more 
to see the boy. 

Pen gave his news, and then introduced Mr. Warrington — 
an old Boniface man — whose chambers he shared. 

The Major was quite satisfied when he heard that Mr. War- 
rington was a younger son of Sir Miles Warrington of Suffolk. 
He had served with an uncle of his India and in New South 
Wales, years ago. 

“ Took a sheep-farm there, sir, made a fortune — better thing 
than law or soldiering, Warrington said. “ Think I shall go 
there too.” And here, the expected beer coming in, in a tankard 
with a glass bottom, Mr. Warrington, with a laugh, said he 
supposed the Major would not have any, and took a long, deep 
draught himself, after which he wiped his wrist across his beard 
with great satisfaction. The young man was perfectly easy and 
unembarrassed. He was dressed in a ragged old shooting- 
jacket, and had a bristly blue beard. He was drinking beer 
like a coal-heaver, and yet you couldn’t but perceive that he 
was a gentleman, 


PENDENNTS. 


2 93 


When he had sat for a minute or two after his draught he 
went out of the room, leaving it to Pen and his uncle, that they 
might talk over family affairs were they so inclined. 

“ Rough and ready, your chum seems,” the Major said. 
“ Somewhat different from your dandy friends at Oxbridge.” 

“Times are altered,” Arthur replied, with a blush. “War- 
rington is only just called, and has no business, but he knows 
law pretty well ; and until I can afford to read with a pleader, 
I use his books and get his help.” 

“ Is that one of the books ? ” the Major asked, with a smile. 
A French novel was lying at the foot of Pen’s chair. 

“ This is not a working day, sir,” the lad said. “We were 
out very late at a party last night — at Lady Whiston’s, “ Pen 
added, knowing his uncle’s weakness. “ Everybody in town 
was there except you, sir ; Counts, Ambassadors, Turks, Stars 
and Garters — I don’t know who — it’s all in the paper — and my 
name too,” said Pen, with great glee. “ I met an old flame of 
mine there, sir,” he added, with a laugh. “ You know whom I 
mean, sir, — Lady Mirabel — to whom I was introduced over 
again. She shook hands, and was gracious enough. I may 
thank you for being out of that scrape, sir. She presented me 
to the husband, too — an old beau in a star and a blonde wig. 
He does not seem very wise. She has asked me to call on her, 
sir : and I may go now without any fear of losing my heart.” 

“ What, we have had some new loves, have we ? ” the Major 
asked, in high good-humor. 

“ Some two or three,” Mr. Pen said, laughing. “ But I don’t 
put on my grand serieux any more, sir. That goes off after the 
first flame.” 

“ Very right, my dear boy. Flames and darts and passion, 
and that sort of thing, do very well for a lad : and you were but 
a lad when that affair with the Fotheringill — Fotheringay — 
(what’s her name ?) came off. But a man of the world gives 
up those follies. You still may do very well. You have been 
hit, but you may recover. You are heir to a little indepen- 
dence, which everybody fancies is a doosid deal more. You 
have a good name, good wits, good manners and a good person 
— and, begad ! I don’t see why you shouldn’t marry a woman 
with money — get into Parliament — distinguish yourself, and — 
and, in fact, that sort of thing. Remember, it’s as easy to 
marry a rich woman as a poor woman : and a devilish deal 
pleasanter to sit down to a good dinner than to a scrag of 
mutton in lodgings. Make up your mind to that. A woman 
with a good jointure is a doosid deal easier a profession than 


PEND ENNIS'. 


294 

the law, let me tell you. Look out : / shall be on the watch fot 
you : and I shall die content, my boy, if I can see you with a 
good lady-like wife, and a good carriage, and a good pair of 
horses, living in society, and seeing your friends, like a gentle- 
man.” It ^was thus this affectionate uncle spoke, and ex- 
pounded to Pen his simple philosophy. 

“ What would my mother and Laura say to this, I wonder ? ” 
thought the lad. Indeed, old Pendennis’s morals were not 
their morals, nor was his wisdom theirs. 

This affecting conversation between uncle and nephew had 
scarcely concluded, when Warrington came out of his bedroom, 
no longer in rags, but dressed like a gentleman, straight and 
tall, and perfectly frank and good-humored. He did the honors 
of his ragged sitting-room with as much ease as if it had been 
the finest apartment in London. And queer rooms they were 
in which the Major found his nephew. The carpet was full of 
holes — the table stained with many circles of Warrington’s 
previous ale-pots. There was a small library of law-books, 
books of poetry, and of mathematics, of which he was very fond. 
(He had been one of the hardest livers and hardest readers of 
his time at Oxbridge, where the name of Stunning Warrington 
was yet famous for beating bargemen, pulling matches, winning 
prizes, and drinking milk-punch.) A print of the old college 
hung up over the mantel-piece, and some battered volumes of 
Plato, bearing its well-known arms, were on the book-shelves. 
There were two easy chairs ; a standing reading-desk piled 
with bills ; a couple of very meagre briefs on a broken-legged 
study-table. Indeed; there was scarcely any article of furniture 
that had not been in the wars, and was not wounded. “ Look 
here, sir, here is Pen’s room. He is a dandy, and has got 
curtains to his bed, and wears shiny boots, and has a silver 
dressing-case.” Indeed, Pen’s room was rather coquettishly 
arranged, and a couple of neat prints of opera-dancers, beside 
a drawing of Fairoaks, hung on the walls.* In Warrington’s 
room there was scarcely any article of furniture, save a great 
shower-bath, and a heap of books by the bedside ; where he lay 
upon straw like Margery Daw, and smoked his pipe, and read 
half through the night his favorite poetry or mathematics. 

When he had completed his simple toilet, Mr. Warrington 
came out of his room, and proceeded to the cupboard to search 
for his breakfast. 

“ Might I offer you a mutton-chop, sir ? We cook ’em our- 
selves, hot and hot; and I am teaching Pen the first principles 
of law, cooking, and morality at the same time. He’s a lazy 
beggar, sir, and too much of a dandy.” 


PENDENNIS. 


2 95 

And so saying Mr. Warrington wiped a gridiron with a 
piece of paper, put it on the fire, and on it two mutton-chops, 
and took from the cupboard a couple of plates, and some knives 
and silver forks, and castors. 

“ Say but a word, Major Pendennis,” he said ; “ there’s 
another chop in the cupboard, or Pidgeon shall go out and get 
you anything you like.” 

Major Pendennis sat in wonder and amusement, but he 
said he had just breakfasted, and wouldn’t have any lunch. 
So Warrington cooked the chops, and popped them hissing hot 
upon the plates. 

Pen fell to at his chop with a good appetite, after looking 
up at his uncle, and seeing that gentleman was still in good- 
humor. 

“ You see, sir,” Warrington said, “ Mrs. Flanagan isn’t 
here to do ’em, and we can’t employ the boy, for the little 
beggar is all day occupied cleaning Pen’s boots. And now for 
another swig at the beer. Pen drinks tea ; it’s only fit for old 
women.” 

“ And so you were at Lady Whiston’s last night,” the Major 
said, not in truth knowing what observation to make to this 
rough diamond. 

“ I at Lady Whiston’s ! not such a flat, sir. I don’t care for 
female society. In fact it bores me. I spent my evening 
philosophically at the Back Kitchen.” 

“ The Back Kitchen ? indeed ! ” said the Major. 

“ I see you don’t know what it means,” Warrington said. 
“Ask Pen. He was there after Lady Whiston’s. Tell Majoi 
Pendennis about the Back Kitchen, Pen — don’t be ashamed of 
yourself.” 

So Pen said it was a little eccentric society of men of letters 
and men about town, to which he had been presented ; and the 
Major began to think that the young fellow had seen a good 
deal of the world since his arrival in London. 


296 


PEND ENNIS. 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE. 

Colleges, schools, and inns of court, still have some 
respect for antiquity, and maintain a great number of the 
customs and institutions of our ancestors, with which those 
persons who do not particularly regard their forefathers, or 
perhaps are not very well acquainted with them, have long 
since done away. A well-ordained workhouse or prison is much 
better provided with the appliances of health, comfort, and 
cleanliness, than a respectable Foundation School, a venerable 
College, or a learned Inn. In the latter place of residence 
men are contented to sleep in dingy closets, and to pay for the 
sittihg-room and the cupboard, which is their dormitory, the price 
of a good villa and garden in the suburbs, or of a roomy house 
in the neglected squares of the town. The poorest mechanic 
in Spitalfields has a cistern and an unbounded supply of water 
at his command ; but the gentlemen of the inns of court, and 
the gentlemen of the universities, have their supply of this 
cosmetic fetched in jugs by laundresses and bedmakers, and 
live in abodes which were erected long before the custom of 
cleanliness and decency obtained among us. There are indi- 
viduals still alive who sneer at the people, and speak of them 
with epithets of scorn. Gentlemen, there can be but little 
doubt that your ancestors were the Great Unwashed; and in 
the Temple especially, it is pretty certain, that only under the 
greatest difficulties and restrictions, the virtue which has been 
pronounced to be next to godliness could have been practised 
at all. 

Old Grump, of the Norfolk Circuit, who had lived for more 
than thirty years in the chambers under those occupied by 
Warrington and Pendennis, and who used to be awakened by 
the roaring of the shower-baths which those gentlemen had 
erected in their apartments, — part of the contents of which 
occasionally trickled through the roof into Mr. Grump’s room, 
— declared that the practice was an absurd, newfangled, dandy- 
fied folly, and daily cursed the laundress who slopped the 
staircase by which he had to pass. Grump, now much more 
than half a century old had indeed never used the luxury in 
question. He had done without water very well, and so had 


PENDENNIS. 


297 

our fathers before him. Of all those knights and baronets, 
lords and gentlemen, bearing arms, whose escutcheons are 
painted upon the walls of the famous hall of the Upper Temple, 
was there no philanthropist good-natured enough to devise a 
set of Hummums for the benefit of the lawyers, his fellows and 
successors ? The Temple historian makes no mention of such 
a scheme. There is Pump Court and Fountain Court with their 
hydraulic apparatus, but one never heard of a bencher disport- 
ing in the fountain ; and can’t but think how many a counsel 
learned in the law of old days might have benefitted by the 
pump. 

Nevertheless, those venerable Inns which have the Lamb 
and Flag and the Winged Horse for their ensigns, have attrac- 
tions for persons who inhabit them, and a share of rough 
comforts and freedom, which men always remember with 
pleasure. I don’t know whether the student of law permits 
himself the refreshment of enthusiasm, or indulges in poetical 
reminiscences as he passes by historical chambers, and says, 
“Yonder Eldon lived — upon this site Coke mused upon 
Lyttleton — here Chitty toiled — here Barnwell and Alderson 
joined in their famous labors — here Byles composed his great 
work upon bills, and Smith compiled his immortal leading cases 
— here Gustavus still toils, with Solomon to aid him : ” but the 
man of letters can’t but love the place which has been inhabited 
by so many of his brethren, or peopled by their creations as 
real to us at this day as the authors whose children they were 
— and Sir Roger de Coverley walking in the Temple Garden, 
and discoursing with Mr. Spectator about the beauties in hoops 
and patches who are sauntering over the grass, is just as lively 
a figure to me as old Samuel Johnson rolling through the fog 
with the Scotch gentleman at his heels on their way to Dr. 
Goldsmith’s chambers in Brick Court ; or Harry Fielding, with 
inked ruffles and a wet towel round his head, dashing off articles 
at midnight for the Covent Garden Journal, while the printer’s 
boy is asleep in the passage. 

If we could but get the history of a single day' as it passed 
in any one of those four-storied houses in the dingy court where 
our friends Pen and Warrington dwelt, some Temple Asmodeus 
might furnish us with a queer volume. There may be a great 
parliamentary counsel on the ground floor, who drives off to 
Belgravia at dinner-time, when his clerk, too, becomes a gentle- 
man, and goes away to entertain his friends, and to take his 
pleasure. But a short time since he was hungry and briefless 
in some garret of the Inn ; lived by stealthy literature ; hoped, 


PEND ENNIS. 


298 

and waited, and sickened, and no clients came ; exhausted his 
own means and his friends’ kindness ; had to remonstrate 
humbly with duns, and to implore the patience of poor creditors. 
Ruin seemed to be staring him in the face, when, behold, a 
turn of the wheel of fortune, and the lucky wretch in posses- 
sion of one of those prodigious prizes which are sometimes 
drawn in the great lottery of the Bar. Many a better lawyer 
than himself does not make a fifth part of the income of his 
clerk, who, a few months since, could scarcely get credit for 
blacking for his master’s unpaid boots. On the first floor, per- 
haps, you will have a venerable man whose name is famous, 
who has lived for half a century in the Inn, whose brains are 
full of books, and whose shelves are stored with classical and 
legal lore. He has lived alone all these fifty years, alone and 
for himself, amassing learning, and compiling a fortune. He 
comes home now at night only from the club, where he has been 
dining freely, to the lonely chambers where he lives a godless 
old recluse. When he dies, his Inn will erect a tablet to his 
honor, and his heirs burn a part of his library. Would you like 
to have such a prospect for your old age, to store up learning 
and money, and end so ? But we must not linger too long by 
Mr. Doomsday’s door. Worthy Mr. Grump lives over him, who 
is also an ancient inhabitant of the Inn, and who, when Dooms- 
day comes home to read Catullus, is sitting down with three 
steady seniors of his standing, to a steady rubber at whist, after 
a dinner at which they have consumed their three steady bottles 
of Port. You may see the old boys asleep at the Temple 
Church of a Sunday. Attornies seldom trouble them, and they 
have small fortunes of their own. On the other side of the 
third landing, where Pen and Warrington live, till long after 
midnight, sits Mr. Paley, who took the highest honors, and who 
is a fellow of his college, who will sit and read and note cases 
until two o’clock in the morning ; who will rise at seven and 
be at the pleader’s chambers as soon as they are open, where 
he will work until an hour before dinner-time ; who will come 
home from Hall and read and note cases again until dawn next 
day, when perhaps Mr. Arthur Pendennis and his friend Mr. 
Warrington are returning from some of their wild expeditions. 
How differently employed Mr. Paley has been ! He has not 
been throwing himself away : he has only been bringing a great 
intellect laboriously down to the comprehension of a mean sub- 
ject, and in his fierce grasp of that, resolutely excluding from 
his mind all higher thoughts, all better things, all the wisdom 
of philosophers and historians, all the thoughts of poets ; all 


PENDENNIS. 


299 

wit, fancy, reflection, art, love, truth altogether — so that he may 
master that enormous legend of the law, which he proposes to 
gain his livelihood by expounding. Warrington and Paley had 
been competitors for university honors in former days, and had 
run each other hard ; and everybody said now that the former 
was wasting his time and energies, whilst all people praised 
Paley for his industry. There may be doubts, however, as to 
which was using his time best. The one could afford time to 
think, and the other never could. The one could have sym- 
pathies and do kindnesses ; and the other must needs be always 
selfish. He could not cultivate a friendship or do a charity, or 
admire a work of genius, or kindle at the sight of beauty or the 
sound of a sweet song — he had no time, and no eyes for any- 
thing but his law-books. All was dark outside his reading- 
lamp. Love, and Nature, and Art (which is the expression of 
our praise and sense of the beautiful world of God), were shut 
out from him. And as he turned off his lonely lamp at night, 
he never thought but that he had spent the day profitably, and 
went to sleep alike thankless and remorseless. But he shud 
dered when he met his old companion Warrington on the stairs, 
and shunned him as one that was doomed to perdition. 

It may have been the sight of that cadaverous ambition and 
self-complacent meanness, which showed itself in Paley’s yellow 
face, and twinkled in his narrow eyes, or it may have been a 
natural appetite for pleasure and joviality, of which it must be 
confessed Mr. Pen was exceedingly fond, which deterred that 
luckless youth from pursuing his designs upon the Bench or the 
Woolsack with the ardor, or rather steadiness, which is requisite 
in gentlemen who would climb to those seats of honor. He en- 
joyed the Temple life with a great deal of relish : his worthy 
relatives thought he was reading as became a regular student : 
and his uncle wrote home congratulatory letters to the kind 
widow at Fairoaks, announcing that the lad had sown his wild 
oats, and was becoming quite steady. The truth is, that it was 
a new sort of excitement to Pen the life in which he was now 
engaged, and having given up some of the dandyfied pre- 
tensions, and fine-gentleman airs which he had contracted 
among his aristocratic college acquaintances, of whom he now 
saw but little, the rough pleasures and amusements of a London 
bachelor were very novel and agreeable to him, and he enjoyed 
them all. Time was he would have envied the dandies their 
fine horses in Rotton Row, but he was contented now to walk 
in the Park and look at them. He was too young to succeed 
in London society without a better name and a larger fortune 


3oo 


PENDENNIS. 


than he had, and too lazy to get on without these adjuncts. 
Old Pendennis fondly thought he was busied with law because 
he neglected the social advantages presented to him, and, 
having been at half a dozen balls and evening-parties, retreated 
before their dulness and sameness ; and whenever anybody 
made enquiries of the worthy Major about his nephew, the old 
gentleman said the young rascal was reformed, and could not 
be got away from his books. But the Major would have been 
almost as much horrified as Mr. Paley was, had he known what 
was Mr. Pen’s real course of life, and how much pleasure en- 
tered into his law studies. 

A long morning’s reading, a walk in the park, a pull on the 
river, a stretch up the hill to Hampstead, and a modest tavern 
dinner ; a bachelor night passed here or there, in joviality, not 
vice (for Arthur Pendennis admired women so heartily that he 
could never bear the society of any of them that were not, in 
his fancy at least, good and pure) : a quiet evening at home, 
alone with a friend and a pipe or two, and a humble potation 
* of British spirits, whereof Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, invari- 
ably tested the quality ; — these were our young gentleman’s 
pursuits, and it must be owned that his life was not unpleasant. 
In term-time, Mr. Pen showed a most praiseworthy regularity 
in performing one part of the law-student’s course of duty, and 
eating his dinners in Hall. Indeed, that Hall of the Upper 
Temple is a sight not uninteresting, and with the exception of 
some trifling improvements and anachronisms which have been 
introduced into the practice there, a man may sit down and 
fancy that he joins in a meal of the seventeenth century. The 
bar have their messes, the students their tables apart ; the 
benchers sit at the high table on the raised platform, sur- 
rounded by pictures of judges of the law and portraits of royal 
personages who have honored its festivities with their presence 
and patronage. Pen looked about, on his first introduction, 
not a little amused with the scene which he witnessed. Among 
his comrades of the student class there were gentlemen of all 
ages, from sixty to seventeen ; stout gray-headed attornies who 
were proceeding to take the superior dignity, — dandies and men- 
about-town who wished for some reason to be barristers of 
seven years’ standing, — swarthy, black-eyed natives of the 
Colonies, who came to be called here before they practised in 
their own islands, — and many gentlemen of the Irish nation, 
who make a sojourn in Middle Temple Lane before they return 
to the green country of their birth. There were little squads 
of reading students who talked law all dinner-time ; there were 


P END ENNIS. 


301 


rowing men, whose discourse was of sculling-matches, the Red 
House, Vauxhall, and the Opera; there were others great in 
politics, and orators of the students’ debating clubs ; with all 
of which sets, except the first, whose talk was an almost un- 
known and a quite uninteresting language to him, Mr. Pen 
made a gradual acquaintance, and had many points of sympathy. 

The ancient and liberal Inn of the Upper Temple provides 
in its Hall, and for a most moderate price, an excellent whole- 
some dinner of soup, meat, tarts, and port-wine or sherry, for 
the barristers and students who attend that place of refection. 
The parties are arranged in messes of four, each of which 
quartets has its piece of beef or leg of mutton, its sufficient 
apple-pie and its bottle of wine. But the honest habitues of the 
hall, amongst the lower rank of students, who have a taste for 
good living, have many harmless arts by which they improve 
their banquet, and innocent “ dodges ” (if we may be permitted 
to use an excellent phrase that has become vernacular since 
the appearance of the last dictionaries) by which they strive to 
attain for themselves more delicate food than the common 
every-day roast meat of the students’ tables. 

“ Wait a bit,” said Mr. Lowton, one of these Temple gour- 
mands. “ Wait a bit,” said Mr. Lowton, tugging at Pen’s 
gown — “ the tables are very full, and there’s only three benchers 
to eat ten side-dishes — if we wait, perhaps we shall get some- 
thing from their table.” And Pen looked with some amuse- 
ment, as did Mr. Lowton with eyes of fond desire, towards the 
benchers’ high table, where three old gentlemen were standing 
up before a dozen silver dish-covers, while the clerk was quaver- 
ing out a grace. 

Lowton was great in the conduct of the dinner. His aim 
was to manage so as to be the first, or captain of the mess, and 
to secure for himself the thirteenth glass of the bottle of port- 
wine. Thus he would have the command of the joint on which 
he operated his favorite cuts, and made rapid dexterous appro- 
priations of gravy, which amused Pen infinitely. Poor Jack 
Lowton ! thy pleasures in life were very harmless ; an eager 
epicure, thy desires did not go beyond eighteen-pence. 

Pqn was somewhat older than many of his fellow-students, 
and there was that about his style and appearance which, as we 
have said, was rather haughty and impertinent, that stamped 
him as a man of ton — very unlike those pale students who were 
talking law to one another, and those ferocious dandies, in row- 
ing shirts and astonishing pins and waistcoats, who represented 
the idle part of the little community. The humble and good- 


302 


PENDENNIS. 


natured Lowton had felt- attracted by Pen’s superior looks and 
presence — and had made acquaintance with him at the mess by 
opening the conversation. 

“ This is boiled-beef day, I believe, sir,” said Lowton to Pen. 

“ Upon my word, sir, I’m not aware,” said Pen, hardly able 
to contain his laughter, but added, “ I’m a stranger ; this is 
my first term ; ” on which Lowton began to point out to him the 
notabilities in the Hall. 

“ That’s Boosey the bencher, the bald one sitting under the 
picture and aving soup ; I wonder whether it’s turtle ? They 
often ave turtle. Next is Balls, the King’s Counsel, and Swetten- 
ham — Hodge and Swettenham, you know. That’s old Grump, 
the senior of the bar ; they say he’s dined here forty years. 
They often send ’em down their fish from the benchers to the 
senior table. Do you see those four fellows seated opposite 
us ? They are regular swells — tip-top fellows, I can tell you — 
Mr. Trail, the Bishop of Ealing’s son, Honorable Fred. Ring- 
wood, Lord Cinqbar’s brother, you know. He'll have a good 
place, I bet any money : and Bob Suckling, who’s always with 
him — a high fe)low too. Ha ! ha ! ” Here Lowton burst into 
a laugh. 

“ What is it ? ” said Pen, still amused. 

“ I say, I like to mess with those chaps,” Lowton said, 
winking his eye knowingly, and pouring out his glass of wine. 

“ And why ? ” asked Pen. 

“ Why ! they don’t come down here to dine, you know, they 
only make believe to dine. They dine here, Law bless you ! 
They go to some of the swell clubs, or else to some grand din- 
ner-party. You see their names in the ‘ Morning Post ’ at all 
the fine parties in London. Why, I bet anything that Ringwood 
has his cab, or Trail his brougham (he’s a devil of a fellow, and 
makes the bishop’s money spin, I can tell you) at the corner of 
Essex Street at this minute. They dine! They won’t dine 
these two. hours, I dare say.” 

“ But why should you like to mess with them, if they don’t 
eat any dinner ? ” Pen asked, still puzzled. ‘‘There’s plenty, 
isn’t there ? ” 

“ How green you are,” said Lowton. “ Excuse me, but 
you are green. They don’t drink any wine, don’t you see, and 
a fellow gets the bottle to himself if he likes it when he messes 
with those three chaps. That’s why Corkoran got in with ’em.” 

“ Ah, Mr. Lowton, I see you are a sly fellow,” Pen said, 
delighted with his acquaintance : on which the other modestly 
replied, that he had lived in London the better part of his life, 


PENDENMIS. 


303 


and of course had his eyes about, him; and went on with his 
catalogue to Pen. 

“ There’s a lot of Irish here,” he said : “ that Corkoran’s 
one, and I can’t say I like him. You see that handsome chap 
with the blue neck-cloth, and pink shirt, and yellow waistcoat, 
that’s another ; that’s Molloy Maloney, of Ballymaloney, and 
nephew to Major-General Sir Hector O’Dowd, he, he,” Lowton 
said, trying to imitate the Hibernian accent. “ He’s always 
bragging about his uncle ; and came into Hall in silver- 
striped trousers the day he had been presented. That other 
near him, with the long black hair, is a tremendous rebel. By 
Jove, sir, to hear him at the Forum it makes your blood freeze ; 
and the next is an Irishman, too, Jack Finucane, reporter of a 
newspaper. They all stick together, those Irish. It’s your 
turn to fill your glass. What ? you won’t have any port ? 
Don’t like port with your dinner ? Here’s your health.” And 
this worthy man found himself not the less attached to Pen- 
dennis because the latter disliked port-wine at dinner. 

It was while Pen was taking his share of one of these 
dinners with his acquaintance Lowton as the captain of his 
mess, that there came to join them a gentleman in a barrister’s 
gown, who could not find a seat, as it appeared, amongst the 
persons of his own degree, and who strode over the table and 
took his place on the bench where Pen sat. He was dressed 
in old clothes and a faded gown, which hung behind him, and 
he wore a shirt which, though clean, was extremely ragged, 
and very different to the magnificent pink raiment of Mr. 
Molloy Maloney, who occupied a commanding position in the 
next mess. In order to notify their appearance at dinner, it is 
the custom of the gentlemen who eat in the Upper Temple Hall 
to write down their names upon slips of paper, which are pro- 
vided for that purpose, with a pencil for each mess. Lowton 
wrote his name first, then came Arthur Pendennis, and the 
next was that of the gentleman in the old clothes. He smiled 
when he saw Pen’s name, and looked at him. “ We ought to 
know each other,” he said. “We’re both Boniface men; my 
name’s Warrington.” 

“ Are you St Warrington ? ” Pen said, delighted to see 

this hero. 

Warrington laughed — “ Stunning Warrington — yes,” he said 
“ I recollect you in your freshman’s term. But you appear to 
have quite cut me out.” 

“ The college talks about you still,” said Pen, who had a 
generous admiration for talent and pluck. “ The bargeman 


PEND ENNIS. 


3°4 

you thrashed, Bill Simes, don’t you remember, wants you up 
again at Oxbridge. The Miss Notley’s, the haberdashers ” 

“ Hush ! ” said Warrington — “ glad to make your acquaint- 
ance, Pendennis. Heard a good deal about you.” 

The young men were friends immediately, and at once deep 
in college-talk. And Pen, who had been acting rather the fine 
gentleman on a previous day, when he pretended to Lowton 
that he could not drink port-wine at dinner, seeing Warrington 
take his share with a great deal of gusto, did not scruple about 
helping himself any more, rather to the disappointment of 
honest Lowton. When the dinner was over, Warrington asked 
Arthur where he was going. 

“ I thought of going home to dress, and hear Grisi in 
Norma,” Pen said. 

“ Are you going to meet anybody there ? |Mie asked. 

Pen said, “ No — only to hear the music, of which he was 
very fond.” 

“You had much better come home and smoke a pipe with 
me,” said Warrington, — “ a very short one. Come, I live close 
by in Lamb Court, and we’ll talk over Boniface and old times.” 

“ They went away ; Lowton sighed after them. He knew 
that Warrington was a baronet’s son, and he looked up with 
simple reverence to all the aristocracy. Pen and Warrington 
became sworn friends from that night. Warrington’s cheerful- 
ness and jovial temper, his good sense, his rough welcome, and 
his never-failing pipe of tobacco, charmed Pen, who found it 
more pleasant to dive into shilling taverns with him, than to 
dine in solitary state amongst the silent and polite frequenters 
of the Polyanthus. 

Ere long Pen gave up his lodgings in St. James’s, to which 
he had migrated on quitting his hotel, and found it was much 
more economical to take up his abode with Warrington in Lamb 
Court, and furnish and occupy his friend’s vacant room there. 
For it must be said of Pen, that no man was more easily led 
than he to do a thing, when it was a novelty, or when he had a 
mind to it. And Pidgeon, the youth, and Flanagan, the laun- 
dress, divided their allegiance now between Warrington and 
Pen. 


PENDENNIS. 


305 


CHAPTER XXX. 

OLD AND NEW ACQUAINTANCES. 

Elated with the idea of seeing life, Pen went into a hun- 
dred queer London haunts. He liked to think he was consort- 
ing with all sorts of men — so he beheld coalheavers in their 
taprooms ; boxers in their inn-parlors ; honest citizens disport- 
ing in the suburbs or on the river ; and he would have liked to 
hob and nob with celebrated pickpockets, or drink a pot of ale 
with a company of burglars and cracksmen, had chance afforded 
him an opportunity of making the acquaintance of this class of 
society. It was good to see the gravity with which Warrington 
listened to the Tutbury Pet or the Brighton Stunner at the 
Champion’s Arms, and behold the interest which he took in the 
coalheaving company assembled at the Fox-under-the-Hill. 
His acquaintance with the public-houses of the metropolis and 
its neighborhood, and with the frequenters of their various par- 
lors, was prodigious. He was the personal friend of the land- 
lord and landlady, and welcome to the bar as to the club-room. 
He liked their society, he said, better than that of his own class, 
whose manners annoyed him, and whose conversation bored 
him. “ In society,” he used to say, “ everybody is the same, 
wears the same dress, eats and drinks, and says the same 
things ; one young dandy at the club talks and looks just like 
another, one Miss at a ball exactly resembles another, whereas 
there’s character here. I like to talk with the strongest man 
in England, or the man who can drink the most beer in England, 
or with that tremendous republican of a hatter, who thinks This 
tlewood was the greatest character in history. I like gin-and- 
water better than claret. I like a sanded floor in Carnaby 
Market better than a chalked one in May Fair. I prefer Snobs, 
I own it.” Indeed, this gentleman was a social republican ; 
and it never entered his head while conversing with Jack and 
Tom that he was in any respect their better ; although, per- 
haps, the deference which they paid him might secretly please 
him. 

Pen followed him then to these various resorts of men with 
great glee and assiduity. But he was considerably younger, 
and therefore much more pompous and stately than Warring* 

20 


PENDENNIS. 


3°6 

ton ; in fact, a young prince in disguise, visiting the poor of his 
father’s kingdom. They respected him as a high chap, a fine 
fellow, a regular young swell. He had somehow about him an 
air of imperious good-humor, and a royal frankness and majesty, 
although he was only heir apparent to twopence-halfpenny, and 
but one in descent from a gallypot. If these positions are 
made for us, we acquiesce in them very easily ; and are always 
pretty ready to assume a superiority over those who are as good 
as ourselves. Pen’s condescension at this time of his life was 
a fine thing to witness. Amongst men of ability this assump- 
tion and impertinence passes off with extreme youth : but it is 
curious to watch the conceit of a generous and clever lad — 
there is something almost touching in that early exhibition of 
simplicity and folly. 

So, after reading pretty hard of a morning, and, I fear, not 
law merely, but politics and general history and literature, which 
were as necessary for the advancement and instruction of a 
young man as mere dry law, after applying with tolerable as- 
siduity to letters, to reviews, to elemental books of law, and, 
above all, to the newspaper, until the hour of dinner was draw- 
ing nigh, these young gentlemen would sally out upon the town 
with great spirits and appetite, and bent upon enjoying a merry 
night as they passed a pleasant forenoon. It was a jovial time, 
that of four-and-twenty, when every muscle of mind and body 
was in healthy action, when the world was new as yet, and one 
moved over it spurred onwards by good spirits and the delight- 
ful capability to enjoy. If ever we feel young afterwards, it is 
with the comrades of that time : the tunes we hum in our old 
age, are those we learned then. Sometimes, perhaps, the fes- 
tivity of that period revives in our memory ; but how dingy the 
pleasure-garden has grown, how tattered the garlands look, how 
scant and old the company, and what a number of the lights 
have gone out since that day ! Gray hairs have come on like 
daylight streaming in — daylight and a headache with it. Pleas- 
ure has gone to bed with the rouge on her cheeks. Well, 
friend, let us walk through the day, sober and sad, but friendly. 

I wonder what Laura and Helen would have said, could 
they have seen, as they might not unfrequently have done had 
they been up and in London, in the very early morning when 
the bridges began to blush in the sunrise, and the tranquil 
streets of the City to shine in the dawn, Mr. Pen and Mr. War- 
rington rattling over the echoing flags towards the Temple, 
after one of their wild nights of carouse — nights wild, but not 
so wicked as such nights sometimes are, for Warrington was a 


FENDENNIS. 


307 


woman-hater ; and Pen, as we have said, too lofty to stoop to a 
vulgar intrigue. Our young Prince of Fairoaks never could 
speak to one of the sex but with respectful courtesy, and shrank 
from a coarse word or gesture with instinctive delicacy — for 
though we have seen him fall in love with a fool, as his betters 
and inferiors have done, and as it is probable that he did more 
than once in his life, yet for the time of the delusion it was 
always as a Goddess that he considered her, and chose to wait 
upon her. Men serve women kneeling — when they get on 
their feet, they go away. 

That was what an old acquaintance of Pen’s said to him in 
his hard homely way ; — an old friend with whom he had fallen 
in again in London — no other than honest Mr. Bows of the 
Chatteris Theatre, who was now employed as piano-forte player, 
to accompany the eminent lyrical talent which nightly delighted 
the public at the Fielding’s Head in Covent Garden : and 
where was held the little club called the Back Kitchen. 

Numbers of Pen’s friends frequented this very merry meet- 
ing. The Fielding’s Head had been a house of entertainment, 
almost since the time when the famous author of Tom Jones 
presided as magistrate in the neighboring Bow Street ; his place 
was pointed out, and the chair said to have been his still occu- 
pied by the president of the night’s entertainment. The worthy 
Cutts, the landlord of the Fielding’s Head, generally occupied 
this post when not disabled by gout or other illness. His jolly 
appearance and fine voice may be remembered by some of my 
male readers ; he used to sing profusely in the course of the 
harmonic meeting, and his songs were of what may be called 
the British B ran dy-and -Water School of Song — such as “The 
Good Old English Gentleman,” “Dear Tom, this Brown Jug,” 
and so forth — songs in which pathos and hospitality are blended, 
and the praises of good liquor and the social affections are 
chanted in a barytone voice. The charms of our women, the 
heroic deeds of our naval and military commanders, are often 
sung in the ballads of this school, and many a time in my youth 
have I admired how Cutts the singer, after he had worked us 
all up to patriotic enthusiasm, by describing the way in which 
the brave Abercrombie received his death-wound, or made us 
join him in tears, which he shed liberally himself, as in faltering 
accents he told “how autumn’s falling leaf proclaimed the old 
man he must die ” — how Cutts the singer became at once Cutts 
the landlord, and, before the applause which we were making 
with our fists on his table, in compliment to his heart-stirring 
melody, and died away, was calling, “ Now, gentlemen, give 


PENDENNIS. 


3°8 

your orders, the waiter’s in the room — John, a champagne cup 
for Mr. Green. I think, sir, you said sausages and mashed 
potatoes? John, attend on the gentleman.” 

“ And I’ll thank ye give me a glass of punch too, John, and 
take care the wather boils,” a voice would cry not unfrequently, 
a well-known voice to Pen, which made the lad blush and start 
when he heard it first — that of the venerable Captain Costigan ; 
who was now established in London, and one of the great pil- 
lars of the harmonic meetings at the Fielding’s Head. 

The Captain’s manners and conversation brought very many 
young men to the place. He was a character, and his fame 
had begun to spread soon after his arrival in the metropolis, 
and especially after his daughter’s marriage. He was great in 
his conversation to the friend for the time being (who was the 
neighbor drinking by his side), about “ me daughter.” He told 
of her marriage, and of the events previous and subsequent to 
that ceremony; of the carriages she kept; of Mirabel’s adora- 
tion for her and for him ; of the hunther pounds which he was 
at perfect liberty to draw from his son-in-law, whenever neces- 
sity urged him. And having stated that it was his firm intention 
to “ dthraw next Sathurday, I give ye me secred word and honoi 
next Sathurday, the fourteenth, when ye’ll see the money will be 
handed over to me at Coutts’s, the very instant I present the 
check,” the Captain would not unfrequently propose to borrow 
half-a-crown of his friend until the arrival of that day of 
Greek Calends, when, on the honor of an officer and a gentle- 
man, he would repee the trifling obligation. 

Sir Charles Mirabel had not that enthusiastic attachment 
to his father-in-law, of which the latter sometimes boasted 
(although in other stages of emotion Cos would inveigh, with 
tears in his eyes, against the ingratitude of the child of his 
bosom, and the stinginess of the wealthy old man who had 
married her) ; but the pair had acted not unkindly towards Cos- 
tigan ; had settled a small pension on him, which was paid 
regularly, and forestalled with even more regularity by poor 
Cos ; and the period of the payments were always well known 
by his friends at the Fielding’s Head, whither the honest Cap- 
tain took care to repair, bank-notes in hand, calling loudly for 
change in the midst of the full harmonic meeting. “ I think 
ye’ll find that note won’t be refused at the Bank of England, 
Cutts, my boy,” Captain Costigan would say. “ Bows, have a 
glass ? Ye needn’t stint yourself to-night, anyhow ; and a glass 
of punch will make ye play con spiritoP For he was lavishly 
free with his money when it came to him, and was scarcely 


PENDENNIS. 


3 <>$ 

known to button his breeches pocket, except when the coin was 
gone, or sometimes, indeed, when a creditor came by. 

It was in one of these moments of exultation that Pen found 
his old friend swaggering at the singers’ table at the Back 
Kitchen of the Fielding’s Head, and ordering glasses of brandy- 
and-water for any of his acquaintances who made their appear- 
ance in the apartment. Warrington, who was on confidential 
terms with the bass singer, made his way up to this quarter of 
the room, and Pen walked at his friend’s heels. 

Pen started and blushed to see . Costigan. He had just 
come from Lady Whiston’s party, where he had met and spoken 
with the Captain’s daughter again for the first time after very 
old old days. He came up with outstretched hand, very kindly 
and warmly to greet the old man ; still retaining a strong re- 
membrance of the time when Costigan’s daughter had been 
everything in the world to him. For though this young gentle- 
man may have been somewhat capricious in his attachments, 
and occasionally have transferred his affections from one woman 
to another, yet he always respected the place where Love had 
dwelt, and, like the Sultan of Turkey, desired that honors should 
be paid to the lady towards whom he had once thrown the royal 
pocket-handkerchief. 

The tipsy Captain returned the clasp of Pen’s hand with all 
the strength of a palm which had become very shaky by the 
constant lifting up of weights of brandy-and-water, looked hard 
in Pen’s face, and said, “ Gracious heavens, is it possible ? Me 
dear boy, me dear fellow, me dear friend ; ” and then with a 
look of muddled curiosity, fairly broke down with, “ I know 
your face, me dear, dear friend, but, bedad, I’ve forgot your 
name.” Five years of constant punch had passed since Pen and 
Costigan met. Arthur was a good deal changed, and the Cap- 
tain may surely be excused for forgetting him ; when a man at 
the actual moment sees things double, we may expect that his 
view of the past will be rather muzzy. 

Pen saw his condition and laughed, although, perhaps, he 
was somewhat mortified. “Don’t you remember me, Cap- 
tain ? ” he said. “ I am Pendennis — Arthur Pendennis, of 
Chatteris.” 

The sound of the young man’s friendly voice recalled and 
steadied Cos’s tipsy remembrance, and he saluted Arthur, as 
soon as he knew him, with a loud volley of friendly greetings. 
Pen was his dearest boy, his gallant young friend, his noble 
collagian, whom he had held in his inmost heart ever since they 
had parted — how was his fawther, no, his mother, and his 


3 10 


PENDENNIS. 


guardian, the General, the Major. “ I preshoom, from you! 
appearance, that you’ve come into your prawpertee ; and, be- 
dad, yee’ll spend it like a man of spirit — I’ll go bail for that. 
No ! not yet come into your estate ? If you want any thrifle, 
heark ye, there’s poor old Jack Costigan has got a guinea or 
two in his pocket — and, be heavens ! you shall never want, 
Awther, me dear boy. What’ll ye have ? John, come hither, 
and look aloive ; give this gentleman a glass of punch, and I’ll 
pay for’t. — Your friend ? I’ve seen him before. Permit me to 
have the honor of making meself known to ye, sir, and request- 
ing ye’ll take a glass of punch.” 

“ I don’t envy Sir Charles Mirabel his father-in-law,” 
thought Pendennis. “ And how is my old friend, Mr. Bows, 
Captain ? Have you any news of him, and do you see him still ? ” 

“ No doubt he’s very well,” said the Captain, jingling his 
money, and whistling the air of a song — “ The Little Doodeen ” 
— for the singing of which he was celebrated at the Fielding’s 
Head. “ Me dear boy — I’ve forgot your name again — but me 
name’s Costigan, Jack Costigan, and I’d loike ye to take as 
many tumblers of punch in me name as ever ye loike. Ye 
know me name ; I’m not ashamed of it.” And so the Captain 
went maundering on. 

“ It’s pay-day with the General,” said Mr. Hodgen, the bass 
singer, with whom Warrington was in deep conversation : “ and 
he’s a precious deal more than half-seas over. He has already 
tried that ‘ Little Doodeen ’ of his, and broke it, too, just be- 
fore I sang ‘ King Death.” Have you heard my new song, 
‘The Body Snatcher,’ Mr. Warrington? — angcored at St. 
Bartholomew’s the other night — composed expressly for me. 
Per’aps you or your friend would like a copy of the song, sir ? 
John, just ’ave the kindness to ’and over a ‘Body Snatcher’ 
’ere, will yer ? — There’s a portrait of me, sir, as I sing it — as 
the Snatcher — considered rather like.” 

“Thank you,” said Warrington; “heard it nine times — 
know it by heart, Hodgen. 

Here the gentleman who presided at the piano-forte began 
to play upon bis instrument, and Pen, looking in the direction 
of the music, beheld that very Mr. Bows, for whom he had been 
asking but now, and whose existence Costigan had momentarily 
forgotten. The little old man sat before the battered piano 
(which had injured its constitution wofully by sitting up so 
many nights, and spoke with a voice, as it were, at once hoarse 
and faint), and accompanied the singers, or played with taste 
and grace in the intervals of the songs 


PENDENNIS. 


3 ” 

Bows had seen and recollected Pen at once when the latter 
came into the room, and had remarked the eager warmth of the 
young man’s recognition of Costigan. He now began to play 
an air, which Pen instantly remembered as one which used to 
be sung by the chorus of villagers in “ The Stranger,” just be- 
fore Mrs. Haller came in. It shook Pen as he heard it. He 
remembered how his heart used to beat as that air was played, 
and before the divine Emily made her entry. Nobody, save 
Arthur, took any notice of old Bow’s playing : it was scarcely 
heard amidst the clatter of knives and forks, the calls for 
poached eggs and kidneys, and the tramp of guests and 
waiters. 

Pen went up and kindly shook the player by the hand at 
the end of his performance ; and Bows greeted Arthur with 
great respect and cordiality. “ What, you haven’t forgot the 
old tune, Mr. Pendennis ? ” he said ; “ I thought you’d remem- 
ber it. I take it, it was the first tune of that sort you ever 
heard played — wasn’t it sir? You were quite a young chap 
then. I fear the Captain’s very bad to-night. He breaks out 
on a pay-day ; and I shall have the deuce’s own trouble in get- 
ting him home. We live together. We still hang on, sir, in 
partnership, though Miss Em — though my Lady Mirabel has 
left the firm. — And so you remember old times, do you ? 
Wasn’t she a beauty, sir ? — Your health and my service to you,” 
— and he took a sip at the pewter measure of porter which 
stood by his side as he played. 

Pen had many opportunities of seeing his early acquaint- 
ances afterwards, and of renewing his relations with Costigan 
and the old musician. 

As they sat thus in friendly colloquy, men of all sorts and 
conditions entered and quitted the house of entertainment ; and 
Pen had the pleasure of seeing as many different persons of 
his race, as the most eager observer need desire to inspect. 
Healthy country tradesmen and farmers, in London for their 
business, came and recreated themselves with the jolly singing 
and suppers of the Back Kitchen, — squads of young appren- 
tices and assistants, the shutters being closed over the scene 
of their labors, came hither, for fresh air doubtless, — rakish 
young medical students 5 gallant, dashing, what is called 
“ loudly ” dressed, and (must it be owned ?) somewhat dirty, — 
were here smoking and drinking, and vociferously applauding 
the songs ; — young university bucks were to be found here, too, 
with that indescribable genteel simper which is only learned at 


312 


PENDENNIS 


the knees of Alma Mater ; — and handsome young guardsmen, 
and florid bucks from the St. James’s Street Clubs; — nay, 
senators English and Irish : and even members of the House 
of Peers. 

The bass singer had made an immense hit with his song of 
“ The Body Snatcher,” and the town rushed to listen to it. A 
curtain drew aside, and Mr. Hodgen appeared in the character 
of the Snatcher, sitting on a coffin, with a flask of gin before 
him, with a spade, and a candle stuck in a skull. The song 
was sung with a really admirable terrific humor. The singer’s 
voice went down so low, that its grumbles rumbled into the 
hearer’s awe-stricken soul ; and in the chorus he clamped with 
his spade, and gave a demoniac “ Ha ! ha ! ” which caused the 
very glasses to quiver on the table, as with terror. None of 
the other singers, not even Cutts himself, as that high-minded 
man owned, could stand up before the Snatcher, and he com- 
monly used to retire to Mrs. Cutts’s private apartments, or into 
the bar, before that fatal song extinguished him. Poor Cos’s 
ditty, “ The Little Doodeen,” which Bows accompanied charm- 
ingly on the piano, was sung but to a few admirers, who might 
choose to remain after the tremendous resurrectionist chant. 
The room was commonly emptied after that, or only left in 
possession of a very few and persevering votaries of pleasure. 

Whilst Pen and his friend were sitting here together one 
night, or rather morning, two habitues of the house entered 
almost together. “ Mr. Hoolan and Mr. Doolan,” whispered 
Warrington to Pen, saluting these gentlemen, and in the latter 
Pen recognized his friend of the Alacrity coach, who could not 
dine with Pen on the day on which the latter had invited him, 
being compelled by his professional duties to decline dinner- 
engagements on Fridays, he had stated, with his compliments 
to Mr. Pendennis. 

Doolan’s paper, the “ Dawn,” was lying on the table much 
bestained by porter, and cheek-by-jowl with Hoolan’s paper, 
which we shall call the “ Day ; ” the “ Dawn ” was liberal — the 
“ Day ” was ultra conservative. Many of our Journals are 
officered by Irish gentlemen, and their gallant brigade does the 
penning among us, as their ancestors used to transact the 
fighting in Europe ; and engage under many a flag, to be good 
friends when the battle is over. 

“ Kidneys, John, and a glass of stout,” says Hoolan. 
“ How are you, Morgan ? how’s Mrs. Doolan ? ” 

“ Doing pretty well, thank ye, Mick, my boy — faith she’s 
accustomed to it,” said Doolan. “ How’s the lady that owns 


PENDL ATN/S. 


313 

ye ? Maybe I’ll step down Sunday, and have a glass of punch, 
Kilburn way.” 

“ Don’t bring Patsey with you, Morgan, for our Georgy’s 
get the measles,” said the friendly Mick, and they straightway 
fell to talk about matters connected with their trade — about 
the foreign mails — about who was correspondent at Paris, and 
who wrote from Madrid — about the expense the “ Morning 
Journal ” was at in sending couriers, about the circulation of 
the “ Evening Star,” and so forth. 

Warrington, laughing, took the “ Dawn ” which was lying 
before him, and pointed to one of the leading articles in that 
journal, which commenced thus — 

“ As rogues of note in former days who had some wicked 
work to perform, — an enemy to put out of the way, a quantity 
of false coin to be passed, a lie to be told or a murder to be 
done, — employed a professional perjurer or assassin to do the 
work, which they were themselves too notorious or too coward- 
ly to execute ; our notorious contemporary, the ‘ Day,’ engages 
smashers out of doors to utter forgeries against individuals, and 
calls in auxiliary cut-throats to murder the reputation of those 
who offend him. A black vizarded ruffian (whom we will un- 
mask), who signs the forged name of Trefoil, is at present one 
of the chief bravoes and bullies in our contemporary’s estab- 
lishment. He is the eunuch who brings the bowstring, and 
strangles at the order of the ‘ Day.’ We can convict this cow- 
ardly slave, and propose to do so. The charge which he has 
brought against Lord Bangbanagher, because he is a liberal 
Irish peer, and against the Board of Poor Law Guardians of 
Bangbanagher Union, is,” &c. 

“ How did they like the article at your place, Mick ? ” asked 
Morgan ; “ when the Captain puts his hand to it he’s a tremen- 
dous hand at a smasher. He wrote the article in two hours — 
in — whew — you know where, while the boy was waiting.” 

“ Our governor thinks the public don’t mind a straw about 
these newspaper rows, and has told the Docther to stop answer- 
ing,” said the other. “ Them two talked it out together in my 
room. The Docther would have liked a turn, for he says it’s 
such easy writing, and requires no reading up of a subject : 
but the governor put a stopper on him.” 

“ The taste for eloquence is going out, Mick,” said Morgan. 

“ ’Deed then it is, Morgan,” said Mick. “ That was fine 
writing when the Docther wrote in the ‘ Phaynix,’ and he and 
Condy Roony blazed away at each other day after day.” 

“ And with powder and shot, too, as well as paper,” said 


PEND ENNIS. 


3H 

Morgan. “ Faith, the Docther was out twice, and Condy 
Roony winged his man.” 

“ They are talking about Dr. Boyne and Captain Shandon,” 
Warrington said, “ who are the two Irish controversialists of the 
‘ Dawn ’ and the ‘ Day/ Doctor Boyne being the Protestant 
champion, and Captain Shandon the liberal orator. They are 
the best friends in the world, I believe, in spite of their news- 
paper controversies ; and though they cry out against the Eng- 
lish for abusing their country, by Jove they abuse it themselves 
more in a single article than we should take the pains to do in 
a dozen volumes. How are you, Doolan ? ” 

“ Your servant, Mr. Warrington — Mr. Pendennis, I am de- 
lighted to have the honor of seeing ye again. The night’s 
journey on the top of the Alacrity was one of the most agree- 
able I ever enjoyed in my life, and it was your liveliness and 
urbanity that made the trip so charming. I have often thought 
over that happy night, sir, and talked over it to Mrs. Doolan. 
I have seen your elegant young friend, Mr. Foker, too, here, 
sir, not unfrequently. He is an occasional frequenter of this 
hostelry, and a right good one it is. Mr. Pendennis, when I 
saw you I was on the ‘Tom and Jerry’ Weekly Paper ; I have 
now the honor to be sub-editor of the ‘ Dawn/ one of the best 
written papers of the empire” — and he bowed very slightly to 
Mr. Warrington. His speech was unctuous and measured, his 
courtesy oriental, his tone, when talking with the two English- 
men, quite different to that with which he spoke to his comrade. 

“ Why the devil will the fellow compliment so ? ” growled 
Warrington/with a sneer which he hardly took the pains to 
suppress. “ Psha — who comes here ? — all Parnassus is abroad 
to-night : here’s Archer. We shall have some fun. Well, 
Archer, House up ? ” 

“ Haven’t been there. I have been,” said Archer, with an 
air of mystery, “ where 1 was wanted. Get me some supper, 
John — something substantial. I hate your grandees who give 
you nothing to eat. If it had been, at Apsley House it would 
have been quite different. The Duke knows what. I like, and 
says to the Groom of the Chambers, ‘ Martin, you will have 
some cold beef, not too much done, and a pint bottle of pale ale, 
and some brown sherry, ready in my study as usual ; Archer 
is -coming here this evening.’ The Duke doesn’t eat supper 
himself, but he likes to see a man enjoy a hearty meal and he 
knows that I dine early. A man can’t live upon air, be hanged 
to him.” 

“ Let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. Pendennis,” War- 


PENDENNIS. 


315 


rington said, with great gravity. “ Pen, this is Mr. Archer, 
whom you have heard me talk about; You must know Pen’s 
uncle, the Major, Archer, you who know everybody ? ” 

“ Dined with him the day before yesterday at Gaunt House,” 
Archer said. “ We were four — the French Ambassador, Steyne, 
and we two commoners.” 

“ Why, my uncle is in Scot — ” Pen was going to break out, 
but Warrington pressed his foot under the table as a signal for 
him to be quiet. 

“ It was about the same business that I have been to the 
palace to-night,” Archer went on simply, “ and where I’ve been 
kept four hours, in an ante-room, with nothing but yesterday’s 
1 Times,’ which I knew by heart, as I wrote three of the leading 
articles myself ; and though the Lord Chamberlain came in four 
times, and once holding the royal teacup and saucer in his 
hand, he did not so much as say to me, * Archer, will you have 
a cup of tea ? ’ ” 

“ Indeed ! what is in the wind now? ” asked Warrington — 
and turning to Pen, added, “ You know, I suppose, that when 
there is anything wrong at court they always send for Archer.” 

“ There is something wrong,” said Mr. Archer, “and as the 
story will be all over town in a day or two I don’t mind telling 
it. At the last Chantilly races, where I rode Brian Boru for 
my old friend the Duke de St. Cloud — the old king said to me, 
Archer, I’m uneasy about Saint Cloud. I have arranged his 
marriage with the Princess Maria Cunegonde ; the peace of 
Europe depends upon it — for Russia will declare war if the 
marriage does not take place, and the young fool is so mad 
about Madame Massena, Marshal Massena’s wife, that he 
actually refuses to be a party to the marriage. Well, sir, I 
spoke to Saint Cloud, and having got him into pretty good- 
humor by winning the race, and a good bit of money into the 
bargain, he said to me, ‘Archer, tell the Governor I’ll think of 
it.’ ” 


“ How do you say Governor in French ? ” asked Pen, who 
piqued himself on knowing that language. 

“Oh, we speak in English — I taught him when we were 
boys, and I saved his life at Twickenham, when he fell out of 
a punt,” Archer said. “ I shall never forget the Queen’s looks 
as I brought him out of the water. She gave me this diamond 
ring, and always calls me Charles to this day.” 

“ Madame Massena must be rather an old woman, Archer,” 
Warrington said. 

“ Dev’lish old — old enough to be his grandmother ; I told 


PEND ENNIS. 


3 l6 

him so,” Archer answered at once. “ But those attachments 
for old women are the deuce and all. That’s what the king 
feels : that’s what shocks the poor queen so much. They went 
away from Paris last Tuesday night, and are living at this pres- 
ent moment at Jaunay’s hotel.” 

“ Has there been a private marriage, Archer ? ” asked War- 
rington. 

“Whether there has or not I don’t know,” Mr. Archer re- 
plied ; “ all I know is that I was kept waiting four hours at the 
palace ; that I never saw a man in such a state of agitation as 
the King of Belgium when he came out to speak to me, and 
that I’m devilish hungry — and here comes some supper.” 

“ He has been pretty well to-night,” said Warrington, as the 
pair went home together : “ but I have known him in much 
greater force, and keeping a whole room in a state of wonder. 
Put aside his archery practice, that man is both able and 
honest — a good man of business, an excellent friend, admirable 
to his family as husband, father and son.” 

“ What is it makes him puli the long bow in that wonderful 
manner ? ” 

“ An amiable insanity,” answered Warrington. “ He never 
did anybody harm by his talk, or said evil of anybody. He is 
a stout politician too, and would never write a word or do an 
act against his party, as many of us do.” 

“ Of us! Who are we? ” asked Pen. “ Of what profession 
is Mr. Archer?” 

“ Of the Corporation of the Goosequill — of the Press, my 
boy,” said Warrington ; “ of the fourth estate.” 

“ Are you, too, of the craft, then ? ” Pendennis said. 

“ We will talk about that another time,” answered the other. 
They were passing through the Strand as they talked, and by 
a newspaper office, which was all lighted up and bright. Re- 
porters were coming out of the place, or rushing up to it in cabs ; 
there were lamps burning in the editors’ rooms, and above 
where the compositors were at work : the windows of the 
building were in a blaze of gas. 

“ Look at that, Pen,” Warrington said. “ There she is — the 
great engine — she never sleeps. She has her ambassadors in 
every quarter of the world — her couriers upon every road. Pier 
officers march along with armies, and her envoys walk into 
statesmen’s cabinets. They are ubiquitous. Yonder journal 
has an agent, at this minute, giving bribes at Madrid ; and an- 
other inspecting the price of potatoes in Covent Garden. Look ! 
here comes the Foreign Express galloping in. They will be 


PENDENNIS. 


317 


able to give news to Downing Street to-morrow : funds will rise 
or fall, fortunes be made or lost ; Lord B. will get up, and, 
holding the paper in his hand, and seeing the noble marquis in 
his place, will make a great speech ; and — and Mr. Doolan will 
be called away from his supper at the Back Kitchen ; for he is 
foreign sub-editor, and sees the mail on the newspaper sheet 
before he goes to his own.” 

And so talking, the friends turned into their chambers, as 
the dawn was beginning to peep. 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

IN WHICH THE PRINTER’S DEVIL COMES TO THE DOOR. 

Pen, in the midst of his revels and enjoyments, humble as 
they were, and moderate in cost if not in kind, saw an awful 
sword hanging over him which must drop down before long 
and put an end to his frolics and feasting. His money was 
very nearly spent. His club subscription had carried away a 
third part of it. He had paid for the chief articles of furniture 
with which he had supplied his little bedroom : in fine, he was 
come to the last five-pound note in his pocket-book, and could 
think of no method of providing a successor : for our friend 
had been bred up like a young prince as yet, or as a child in 
arms whom his mother feeds when it cries out. 

Warrington did not know what his comrade’s means were. 
An only child, with a mother at her country house, and an old 
dandy of an uncle who dined with a great man every day, Pen 
might have a large bank at his command for anything that the 
other knew. He had gold chains and a dressing-case fit for a 
lord. His habits were those of an aristocrat, — not that he was 
expensive upon any particular point, for he dined and laughed 
over the pint of porter and the plate of beef from the cook’s 
shop with perfect content and good appetite, — but he could not 
adopt the penny-wise precautions of life. He could not give 
twopence to a waiter ; he could not refrain from taking a cab if 
he had a mind to do so, or if it rained, and as surely as he 
took the cab he overpaid the driver. He had a scorn for 
cleaned gloves and minor economies. Had he been bred to 


PENDENNIS. 


318 

ten thousand a year he could scarcely have been more free- 
handed ; and for a beggar, with a sad story, or a couple of 
pretty piteous-faced children, he never could resist putting his 
hand into his pocket. It was a sumptuous nature, perhaps, 
that could not be brought to regard money ; a natural generos- 
ity and kindness ; and possibly a pretty vanity that was pleased 
with praise, even with the praise of waiters and cabmen. I 
doubt whether the wisest of us know what our own motives 
are, and whether some of the actions of which we are the very 
proudest will not surprise us when we trace them, as we shall 
one day, to their source. 

Warrington then did not know, and Pen had not thought 
proper to confide to his friend, his pecuniary history. That 
Pen had been wild and wickedly extravagant at college, the 
other was aware ; everybody at college was extravagant and 
wild ; but how great the son’s expenses had been, and how 
small the mother’s means, were points which had not been as 
yet submitted to Mr. Warrington’s examination. 

At last the story came out, while Pen was grimly, surveying 
the change for the last five-pound note, as it lay upon the tray 
from the public- house by Mr. Warrington’s pot of ale. 

“ It is the last rose of summer,” said Pen ; “ its blooming 
companions have gone long ago ; and behold the last one of 
the garland has shed its leaves ; ” and he told Warrington the 
whole story which we know of his mother’s means, of his own 
follies, of Laura’s generosity ; during which time Warrington 
smoked his pipe and listened intent. 

“ Impecuniosity will do you good,” Pen’s friend said, knock- 
ing out the ashes at the end of the narration ; “ I don’t know 
anything more wholesome for a man — for an honest man, mind 
you — for another, the medicine loses its effect — than a state of 
tick. It is an alterative and a tonic ; — it keeps your moral man 
in a perpetual state of excitement : as a man who is riding at a 
# fence, or has his opponent’s single-stick before him, is forced 
to look his obstacle steadily in the face, and brace himself to 
repulse or overcome it ; a little necessity brings out your pluck 
if you have any, and nerves you to grapple with fortune. You 
will discover what a number of things you can do without when 
you have no money to buy them. You won’t want new gloves 
and varnished boots, eau de Cologne, and cabs to ride in. You 
have been bred up as a molly-coddle, Pen, and spoilt by the 
women. A single man who has health and brains, and can’t 
find a livelihood in the world, doesn’t deserve to stay there. 
Let him pay his last halfpenny and jump over Waterloo Bridge. 


PEND ENNIS. 


319 

Let him steal a leg of mutton and be transported and get out 
of the country — he is not fit to live in it. Dixi ; I have spoken. 
Give us another pull at the pale ale.” 

“You have certainly spoken; but how is one to live?” 
said Pen. “ There is beef and bread in plenty in England, but 
you must pay for it with work or money. And who will take 
my work ? and what work can I do ? ” 

Warrington burst out laughing. “ Suppose we advertise in 
the ‘ Times,’ ” he said, “ for an usher’s place at a classical and 
commercial academy — A gentleman, B. A. of St. Boniface Col- 
lege, Oxbridge, and who was plucked for this degree — ” 

“ Confound you,” cried Pen. 

“ — Wishes to give lessons in classics and mathematics, 
and the rudiments of the French language ; he can cut hair, 
attend to the younger pupils, and play a second on the piano 
with the daughters of the principal. Address A. P., Lamb 
Court, Temple.” 

“ Go on,” said Pen, growling. 

“ Men take to all sorts of professions. Why, there is your 
friend Bloundell — Bloundell is a professional blackleg, and 
travels the continent, where he picks up young gentlemen of 
fashion and fleeces them. There is Bob O’Toole, with whom I 
was at school, who drives the Ballynafad mail now, and carries 
honest Jack Finucane’s own correspondence to that city. I 
know a man, sir, a doctor’s son, like — well don’t be angry, I 
meant nothing offensive — a doctor’s son, I say, who was walk- 
ing the hospitals here, and quarrelled with his governor on 
questions of finance, and what did he do when he came to his 
last five-pound note ? he let his mustache grow, went into a . 
provincial town, where he announced himself as Professor 
Spineto, chiropodist to the Emperor of All the Russias, and by 
a happy operation on the editor of the county newspaper, estab- 
lished himself in practice, and lived reputably for three years. 
He has been reconciled to his family, and has now succeeded 
to his father’s gallypots.” 

“ Hang gallypots,” cried Pen. “ I can’t drive a coach, cut 
corns, or cheat at cards. There’s nothing else you propose.” 

“ Yes ; there’s our own correspondent,” Warrington said. 
“ Every man has his secrets, look you. Before you told me 
the story of your money-matters, I had no idea but that you 
were a gentleman of fortune, for, with your confounded airs and 
appearance, anybody would suppose you to be so. From what 
you tell me about your mother’s income, it is clear that you 
must not lay any more hands on it. You can’t goon sponging 


320 


PENDENNIS. 


upon the women. You must pay off that trump of a girl. 
Laura is her name ? — here’s your health, Laura ! — and carry a 
hod rather than ask for a shilling from home.” 

“ But how earn one ? ” asked Pen. 

“ How do I live, think you ? ” said the other. “ On my 
younger brother’s allowance, Pendennis ? I have secrets of 
my own, my boy;” and here Warrington’s countenance fell. 
“ I made away with that allowance five years ago : if I had 
made away with myself a little time before, it would have been 
better. I have played off my own bat, ever since. I don’t 
want much money. When my purse is out, I go to work and 
fill it, and then lie idle like a serpent or an Indian, until I have 
digested the mass. Look, I begin to feel empty,” Warrington 
said, and showed Pen a long lean purse, with but a few 
sovereigns at one end of it. 

“ But how do you fill it ? ” said Pen. 

“ I write,” said Warrington. “ I don’t tell the world that I 
do so,” he added, with a blush. “ I do not choose that ques- 
tions should be asked : or, perhaps, I am an ass, and don’t 
wish it to be said that George Warrington writes for bread. 
But I write in the Law Review : look here, these articles are 
mine.” And he turned over some sheets. “ I write in a news- 
paper now and then, of which a friend of mine is editor.” 
And Warrington, going with Pendennis to the club one day, 
called for a file of the “ Dawn,” and pointed with his finger 
silently to one or two articles, which Pen read with delight. 
He had no difficulty in recognizing the style afterwards — the 
strong thoughts and curt periods, the sense, the satire, and the 
scholarship. 

“ I am not up to this,” said Pen, with a genuine admiration 
of his friend’s powers. “ I know very little about politics or 
history, Warrington ; and have but a smattering of letters. I 
can’t fly upon such a wing as yours.” 

“ But you can on your own, my boy, which is lighter, and 
soars higher, perhaps,” the other said, good-naturedly. “ Those 
little scraps and verses which I have seen of yours show me, 
what is rare in these days, a natural gift, sir. You needn’t 
blush, you conceited young jackanapes. You have thought 
so yourself any time these ten years. You have got the sacred 
flame — a little of the real poetical fire, sir, I think ; and all our 
oil-lamps are nothing, compared to that, though ever so well 
trimmed. You are a poet, Pen, my boy,” and so speaking, 
Warrington stretched out his broad hand, and clapped Pen on 
the shoulder. 


PENDENNIS. 


321 


Arthur was so delighted that the tears came into his eyes. 
“ How kind you are to me, Warrington ! ” he said. 

“ I like you, old boy,” said the other. “ I was dev’lish lonely 
in chambers and wanted somebody, and the sight of your honest 
face somehow pleased me. I liked the way you laughed at 
Lowton — that poor good little snob. And, in fine, the reason 
why I cannot tell — but so it is, young ’un. I’m alone in the 
world, sir ; and I wanted some one to keep me company ; ” and 
a glance of extreme kindness and melancholy passed out of 
Warrington’s dark eyes. 

Pen was too much pleased with his own thoughts to perceive 
the sadness of the friend who was complimenting him. “Thank 
you, Warrington,” he said, “ thank you for your friendship to 
me, and — and what you say about me. I have often thought I 
was a poet. I will be one — I think I am one, as you say so, 
though the world mayn’t. Is it — is it the Ariadne in Naxos 
which you liked (I was only eighteen when I wrote it), or the 
Prize Poem ? ” 

Warrington burst into a roar of laughter. “ Why, you 
young goose,” he yelled out — “ of all the miserable weak rubbish 
I ever tried, Ariadne in Naxos is the most mawkish and dis- 
gusting. The Prize Poem is so pompous and feeble, that I’m 
positively surprised, sir, it didn’t get the medal. You don’t 
suppose that you are a serious poet, do you, and are going to 
cut out Milton and Hischylus ? Are you setting up to be a 
Pindar, you absurd little tom-tit, and fancy you have the strength 
and pinion which the Theban eagle bear, sailing with supreme 
dominion through the azure fields of air ? No, my boy, I think 
you can write a magazine article, and turn out a pretty copy of 
verses ; that’s what I think of you.” 

“ By Jove !” said Pen, bouncing up and stamping his foot, 
“ I’ll show you that I am a better man than you think for.” 

W T arrington only laughed the more, and blew twenty-four 
puffs rapidly out of his pipe by way of reply to Pen. 

An opportunity for showing his skill presented itself before 
very long. That eminent publisher, Mr. Bacon (formerly Bacon 
and Bungay) of Paternoster Row, besides being the proprietor 
of the Legal Review, in which Mr. Warrington wrote, and of other 
periodicals of note and gravity, used to present to the world 
every year a beautiful gilt volume called the “ Spring Annual,” 
edited by the Lady Violet Lebas, and numbering amongst its 
contributors not only the most eminent, but the most fashion- 
able, poets of our time. Young Lord Dodo’s poems first ap- 

21 


322 


PENDEiVNTS. 


peared in this miscellany — the Honorable Percy Popjoy, whose 
chivalrous ballads have obtained him such a reputation — Bed- 
win Sand’s Eastern Ghazuls, and many more of the works of 
our young nobles were first given to the world in the “ Spring 
Annual,” which has since shared the fate of other vernal blos- 
soms, and perished out of the world. The book was daintily 
illustrated with pictures of reigning beauties, or other prints 
of a tender and voluptuous character ; and, as these plates 
were prepared long beforehand, requiring much time in engrav- 
ing, it was the eminent poets who had to write to the plates, and 
not the painters who illustrated the poems. 

One day, just when this volume was on the eve of publica- 
tion, it chanced that Mr. Warrington called in Paternoster 
Row to talk with Mr. Hack, Mr. Bacon’s reader and general 
manager of publications — for Mr. Bacon, not having the least 
taste in poetry or in literature of any kind, wisely employed the 
services of a professional gentleman. Warrington, then, going 
into Mr. Hack’s room on business of his own, found that gentle- 
man with a bundle of proof plates and sheets of the “ Spring 
Annual ” before him, and glanced at some of them. 

Percy Popjoy had written some verses to illustrate one of 
the pictures, which was called the Church Porch. A Spanish 
damsel was hastening to church with a large prayer-book ; a 
youth in a cloak was hidden in a niche watching this young 
woman. The picture was pretty : but the great genius of Percy 
Popjoy had deserted him, for he had made the most execrable 
verses which ever were perpetrated by a young nobleman. 

Warrington burst out laughing as he read the poem : and 
Mr. Hack laughed too, but with rather a rueful face. — “ It won’t 
do,” he said, “ the public won’t stand it. Bungay’s people are 
going to bring out a very good book, and have set up Miss 
Bunion against Lady Violet. We have most titles to be sure 
— but the verses are too bad. Lady Violet herself owns it ; 
she’s busy with her own poem ; what’s to be done ? We can’t 
lose the plate. The governor gave sixty pounds for it ! ” 

“ I know a fellow who would do some verses, I think,” said 
Warrington. “ Let me take the plate home in my pocket : and 
send to my chambers in the morning for the verses. You’ll 
pay well, of course ? ” 

“ Of course,” said Mr. Hack ; and Warrington, having de- 
spatched his own business, went home to Mr. Pen, plate in 
hand. 

“ Now, boy, here’s a chance for you. Turn me off a copy 
of verses to this.” 


PENDENNIS . 


323 


“ What’s this ? A Church Porch — A lady entering it, and 
a youth out of a wine-shop window ogling her. — What the deuce 
am I to do with it ? ” 

“ Try,” said Warrington. “ Earn your livelihood for once, 
you who long so to do it.” 

“ Well I will try,” said Pen. 

“ And I’ll go out to dinner,” said Warrington, and left Mr^ 
Pen in a brown study. 

When Warrington came home that night, at a very late hour, 
the verses were done. “There they are,” said Pen. “I’ve 
screwed ’em out at last. I think they’ll do.” 

“ I think they will,” said Warrington, after reading them ; 
they ran as follows : — 


Although I enter not, 

Yet round about the spot 
Sometimes I hover, 

And at the sacred gate, 

With longing eyes I wait, 

Expectant of her. 

The Minster bell tolls out 
Above the city’s rout 

And noise and humming : 

They’ve stopp’d the chiming bell, 

I hear the organ’s swell — 

She’s coming, she’s coming 1 

My lady comes at last, 

Timid and stepping fast, 

And hastening hither, 

With modest eyes downcast. 

She comes — she’s here — she’s past. 

May Heaven go with her 1 

Kneel undisturb’d, fair saint, 

Pour out your praise or plaint 
Meekly and duly. 

I will not enter there, 

To sully your pure prayer 
With thoughts unruly. 

But suffer me to pace 
Round the forbidden place. 

Lingering a minute, 

Like outcast spirits, who wait 
And see through Heaven’s gate 
Angels within it. 

“ Have you got any more, young fellow ? ” asked Warrington. 
“ We must make them give you a couple of guineas a page ; 
and if the verses are liked, why, you’ll get an entrde into Bacon’s 
magazines, and may turn a decent penny.” 

Pen examined his portfolio and found another ballad which 
he thought might figure with advantage in the “ Spring Annual,” 


324 


PEND ENNIS. 


and consigning these two precious documents to Warrington, 
the pair walked from the Temple, to the famous haunt of the 
Muses and their masters, Paternoster Row. Bacon’s shop was an 
ancient low-browed building, with a few of the books published 
by the firm displayed in the windows, under a bust of my Lord 
of Verulam, and the name of Mr. Bacon in brass on the private 
door. Exactly opposite to Bacon’s house was that of Mr. Bun- 
gay, which was newly painted and elaborately decorated in the 
style of the seventeenth century, so that you might have fancied 
stately Mr. Evelyn passing over the threshold, or curious Mr. 
Pepys examining the books in the window. Warrington went 
into the shop of Mr. Bacon, but Pen stayed without. It was 
agreed that his ambassador should act for him entirely ; and 
the young fellow passed up and down the street in a very 
nervous condition, until he should learn the result of the nego- 
tiation. Many a poor devil before has trodden those flags, with 
similar cares and anxieties at his heels, his bread and his fame 
dependent upon the sentence of his magnanimous patrons of 
the Row. Pen looked at all the winders of all the shops ; and 
the strange variety of literature w ? hich they exhibit. In this 
were displayed black-letter volumes and books in the clear 
types of Aldus and Elzevir : in the next, you might see the 
“Penny Horrific Register;” the “Halfpenny Annals of 
Crime,” and “ History of the most celebrated murderers of all 
countries,” “The Raff’s Magazine,” “The Larky Swell,” and 
other publications of the penny press; whilst at the next 
window, portraits of ill-favored individuals, with fac-similes of 
the venerated signatures of the Reverend Grimes Wapshot, the 
Reverend Elias Howie, and the works written and the sermons 
preached by them, showed the British Dissenter w r here he could 
find mental pabulum. Hard by would be a little casement 
hung with emblems, with medals and rosaries, with little paltry 
prints of saints gilt and painted, and books of controversial the- 
ology, by which the faithful of the Roman opinion might learn 
a short way to deal with Protestants, at a penny a piece, or 
ninepence the dozen for distribution ; whilst in the very next 
window you might see “ Come out of Rome,” a sermon preached 
at the opening of the Shepherd’s Bush College, by John Thomas 
Lord Bishop of Ealing. Scarce an opinion but has its exposi- 
tor and its place of exhibition in this peaceful old Paternoster 
Row, under the toll of the bells of Saint Paul. 

Pen looked in at all the windows and shops, as a gentleman, 
who is going to have an interview with the dentist, examines 
the books on the waiting-room table. He remembered them 


PEND ENNIS. 


325 

afterwards. It seemed to him that Warrington would never 
come out ; and indeed the latter was engaged for some time 
in pleading his friend's cause. 

Pen’s natural conceit would have swollen immensely if he 
could but have heard the report which Warrington gave of him. 
It happened that Mr. Bacon himself had occasion to descend 
to Mr. Hack’s room whilst Warrington was talking there, and 
Warrington knowing Bacon’s weaknesses, acted upon them 
with great adroitness in his friend's behalf. In the first place, 
he put on his hat to speak to Bacon, and addressed him from 
the table on which he seated himself. Bacon liked to be treated 
with rudeness by a gentleman, and used to pass it on to his 
inferiors as boys pass the mark. “ What ! not know Mr. Pen- 
dennis, Mr. Bacon ? ” Warrington said. 44 You can’t live much 
in the world, or you would know him. A man of property in 
the West, of one of the most ancient families in England, rela- 
ted to half the nobility in the empire — he’s cousin to Lord 
Pontypool — he was one of the most distinguished men at Ox- 
bridge ; he dines at Gaunt House every week.” 

Law bless me, you don’t say so, sir. Well — really — Law 
bless me now,” said Mr. Bacon. 

“ I have just been showing Mr. Hack some of his verses, 
which he sat up last night, at my request, to write ; and Hack 
talks about giving him a copy of the book — the what d’-you- 
call-’em.” 

44 Law bless me now, does he ? the what-d’-you-call-’em. 
Indeed ! ” 

44 4 The Spring Annual ’ is its name, — as payment for these 
verses. You don’t suppose that such a man as Mr. Arthur 
Pendennis gives up a dinner at Gaunt House for nothing ? 
You know, as well as anybody, that the men of fashion want to 
be paid.” 

“ That they do, Mr. Warrington, sir,” said the publisher. 

44 1 tell you he’s a star ; he'll make a name, sir. He’s a new 
man, sir.” 

44 They’ve said that of so many of those young swells. Mr. 
Warrington,” the publisher interposed, with a sigh. 44 There 
was Lord Yiscount Dodo, now ; I gave his Lordship a good bit 
of money for his poems, and only sold eighty copies. Mr. 
Popjoy’s Hadgincourt, sir, fell dead.” 

“Well, then. I’ll take my man over to Bungay,” Warrington 
said, and rose from the table. This threat was too much for 
Mr. Bacon, who was instantly ready to accede to any reasonable 
proposal of Mr. Warrington's, and finally asked his manager 


PENDENNIS. 


326 

what those proposals were ? When he heard that the negotia- 
tion only related as yet to a couple of ballads, which Mr. War- 
rington offered for the “ Spring Annual,” Mr. Bacon said, “ Law 
bless you, give him a check directly ; ” and with this paper 
Warrington went out to his friend, and placed it, grinning, in 
Pen’s hands. Pen was as elated as if somebody had left him a 
fortune. He offered Warrington a dinner at Richmond in- 
stantly. “What should he go and buy for Laura and his 
mother ? He must buy something for them.” 

“They’ll like the book better than anything else,” said War- 
rington, “with the young one’s name to the verses, printed 
among the swells.” 

“ Thank God ! thank God ! ” cried Arthur, “ I needn’t be a 
charge upon the old mother. I can pay off Laura now. I can 
get my own living. I can make my own way.” 

“ I can marry the grand vizier’s daughter : I can purchase 
a house in Belgrave Square ; I can build a fine castle in the 
air;” said Warrington, pleased with the other’s exultation. 
“ Weil, you may get bread and cheese, Pen : and I own it tastes 
well, the bread which you earn yourself.” 

They had a magnum of claret at dinner at the club that day, 
at Pen’s charges. It was long since he had indulged in such a’ 
luxury, but Warrington would not baulk him : and they drank 
together to the health of the “ Spring Annual.” 

It never rains but it pours, according to the proverb ; so 
very speedily another chance occurred, by which Mr. Pen was 
to be helped in his scheme of making a livelihood. Warrington 
one day threw him a letter across the table, which was brought 
by a printer’s boy, “ from Captain Shandon, sir ’’—the little 
emissary said : and then went and fell asleep on his accustomed 
bench in the passage. He paid many a subsequent visit there, 
and brought many a message to Pen. 

“ F. P. Tuesday Morning. 

“ My dear Sir, 

“Bungay will be here to-day, about the ‘Pall Mall Gazette.’ You would be the very 
man to help us with a genuine West-end article , — you understand — dashing, trenchant, 

and d aristocratic. Lady Hipshaw will write : but she’s not much you know, and 

we’ve two lords ; but the less they do the better. We must have you. We’ll give you 
your own terms, and we’ll make a hit with the ‘ Gazette.’ 

“ Shall B. come and see you, or can you look in upon me here ? 

“Ever yours, 

“C. S.’’ 

“ Some more opposition,” Warrington said, when Pen had 
read the note. “ Bungay and Bacon are at daggers drawn ; 
each married the sister of the other, and they were for some 
time the closest friends and partners. Hack says it was Mrs. 


PENDENNIS. 


327 

Bungay who caused all the mischief between the two ; whereas 
Shandon, who reads for Bungay a good deal, says Mrs. Bacon 
did the business ; but I don’t know which is right, Peachum 
or Lockit. Since they have separated, it is a furious war be- 
tween the two publishers ; and no sooner does one bring out a 
book of travels, or poems, a magazine or periodical, quarterly, 
or monthly, or weekly, or annual, but the rival is in the field 
with something similar. I have heard poor Shandon tell 
with great glee how he made Bungay give a grand dinner at 
Blackwall to all his writers, by saying that Bacon had invited 
his corps to an entertainment at Greenwich. When Bungay 
engaged your celebrated friend Mr. Wagg to edit the ‘ Lon- 
doner,’ Bacon straightway rushed off and secured Mr. Grindle 
to give his name to the ‘Westminster Magazine.’ When Bacon 
brought out his comic Irish novel of ‘ Barney Brallaghan,’ off 
went Bungay to Dublin, and produced his rollicking Hibernian 
story of ‘ Looney Mac Twolter.’ When Doctor Hicks brought 
out his ‘ Wanderings in Mesopotamia’ under Bacon’s auspices, 
Bungay produced Professor Sadiman’s ‘ Researches in Zahara ; ’ 
and Bungay is publishing his ‘ Pall Mall Gazette ’ as a counter- 
poise to Bacon’s ‘ Whitehall Review.’ Let us go and hear 
about the Gazette.’ There may be a place for you in it, Pen, 
my boy. We will go and see Shandon. We are sure to find 
him at home.” 

“ Where does he live ? ” asked Pen. 

“ In the Fleet Prison,” Warrington said. “ And very much 
at home he is there, too. He is the king of the place.” 

Pen had never seen this scene of London life, and walked 
with no small interest in at the grim gate of that dismal edifice. 
They went through the ante-room, where the officers and jani- 
tors of the place were seated, and passing in at the wicket, en- 
tered the prison. The noise and the crowd, the life and the 
shouting, the shabby bustle of the place, struck and excited Pen. 
People moved about ceaselessly and restless, like caged animals 
in a menagerie. Men were playing at fives. Others pacing 
and tramping : this one in colloquy with his lawyer in dingy black 
— that one walking sadly, with his wife by his side, and a child 
on his arm. Some were arrayed in tattered dressing-gowns, and 
had a look of rakish fashion. Everybody seemed to be busy, 
humming, and on the move. Pen felt as if he choked in the 
place, and as if the door being locked upon him they never 
would let him out. 

They went through a court up a stone staircase, and through 
passages full of people, and noise, and cross lights, and black 


PENDENNIS. 


328 

doors clapping and banging ; — Pen feeling as one does in a 
feverish morning-dream. At last the same little runner who 
had brought Shandon’s note, and had followed them down Fleet 
Street munching apples, and who showed the way to the two 
gentlemen through the prison, said, “ This is the Captain’s 
door,” and Mr. Shandon’s voice from within bade them enter. 

The room, though bare, was not uncheerful. The sun 
was shining in at the window — .near which sat a lady at work, 
who had been gay and beautiful once, but in whose faded 
face kindness and tenderness still beamed. Through all his 
errors and reckless mishaps and misfortunes, this faithful crea- 
ture adored her husband, and thought him the best and clever- 
est, as indeed he was one of the kindest of men. Nothing ever 
seemed to disturb the sweetness of his temper ; not debts ; 
not duns : not misery : not the bottle : not his wife’s unhappy 
position, or his children’s ruined chances. He was perfectly 
fond of wife and children after his fashion : he always had the 
kindest words and smiles for them, and ruined them with the 
utmost sweetness of temper. He never could refuse himself 
or any man any enjoyment which his money could purchase ; he 
would share his last guinea with Jack and Tom, and we may be 
sure he had a score of such retainers. He would sign his name 
at the back of any man’s bill, and never pay any debt of his own. 
He would write on any side, and attack himself or another man 
with equal indifference. Fie was one of the wittiest, the most 
amiable, and the most incorrigible of Irishmen. Nobody could 
help liking Charley Shandon who saw him once, and those 
whom he ruined could scarcely be angry with him. 

When Pen and Warrington arrived, the Captain (he had 
been in an Irish militia regiment once, and the title remained 
with him) was sitting on his bed in a torn dressing-gown, with a 
desk on his knees, at which he was scribbling as fast as his 
rapid pen could write. Slip after slip of paper fell off the desk 
wet on to the ground. A picture of his children was hung up 
over his bed, and the youngest of them was pattering about the 
room. 

Opposite the Captain sat Mr. Bungay, a portly man of 
stolid countenance, with whom the little child had been trying a 
conversation. 

“ Papa’s a very clever man,” said she ; “ mamma says so.” 

“ Oh, very,” said Mr. Bungay. 

“ And you’re a very rich man, Mr. Bundy,” cried the child, 
who could hardly speak plain. 

“ Mary ! ” said Mamma, from her work. 


PENDENNIS . 


329 


“ Oh, never mind,” Bungay roared out with a great laugh ; 
“ no harm in saying I’m rich — he, he — I am pretty well off, my 
little dear.” 

“ If you’re rich, why don’t you take papa out of piz’n ? ” 
asked the child. 

Mamma at this began to wipe her eyes with the work on 
which she was employed. (The poor lady had hung curtains 
up in the room, had brought the children’s picture and placed 
it there, and had made one or two attempts to ornament it.) 
Mamma began to cry; Mr. Bungay turned red, and looked 
fiercely out of his bloodshot little eyes ; Shandon’s pen went on, 
and Pen and Warrington arrived with their knock. 

Captain Shandon looked up from his work. “ How do you 
do, Mr. Warrington,” he said. “ I’ll speak to you in a minute. 
Please sit down, gentlemen, if you can find places,” and away 
went the pen again. 

Warrington pulled forward an old portmanteau — the only 
available seat — and sat down on it with a bow to Mrs. Shandon, 
and a nod to Bungay ; the child came and looked at Pen 
solemnly ; and in a couple of minutes the swift scribbling ceased ; 
and Shandon, turning the desk over on the bed, stopped and 
picked up the papers. 

“ I think this will do,” said he. “ It’s the prospectus for the 
4 Pall Mall Gazette.’ ” 

“ And here’s the money for it,” Mr. Bungay said, laying down 
a five-pound note. “ I’m as good as my word, I am. When I 
say I’ll pay, I pay.” 

“ Faith that’s more than some of us can say,” said Shandon, 
and he eagerly clapped the note into his pocket. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

WHICH IS PASSED IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF LUDGATE HILL. 

Our imprisoned Captain announced, in smart and emphatic 
language in his prospectus, that the time had come at last when 
it was necessary for the gentlemen of England to band together 
in defence of their common rights, and their glorious order, 
menaced on all sides by foreign revolutions, by intestine radi- 
calism, by the artful calumnies of mill-owners and cotton-lords, 


33 ° 


PENDENNIS. 


and the stupid hostility of the masses whom they gulled 
and led. “ The ancient monarchy was insulted,” the Captain 
said, “ by a ferocious republican rabble. The Church was de- 
serted by envious dissent, and undermined by stealthy infi- 
delity. The good institutions, which had made our country 
glorious, and the name of English Gentlemen the proudest in 
world, were left without defence, and exposed to assault and 
contumely from men to whom no sanctuary was sacred, for they 
believed in nothing holy ; no history venerable, for they were 
too ignorant to have heard of the past ; and no law was binding 
which they were strong enough to break, when their leaders 
gave the signal for plunder. It was because the kings of 
France mistrusted their gentlemen,” Mr. Shandon remarked, 
“ that the monarchy of Saint Louis went dowm : it was because 
the people of England still believed in their gentlemen, that this 
country encountered and overcame the greatest enemy a nation 
ever met : it was because we were headed by gentlemen that 
the Eagles retreated before us from the Douro to the Garonne : 
it was a gentleman who broke the line at Trafalgar, and swept 
the plain of Waterloo.” 

Bungay nodded his head in a knowing manner, and winked 
his eyes when the Captain came to the Waterloo passage : and 
Warrington burst out laughing. 

“ You see how our venerable friend Bungay is affected,” 
Shandon said, slily looking up from his papers — “ that’s your 
true sort of test. I have used the Duke of Wellington and the 
battle of Waterloo a hundred times : and I never knew the Duke 
to fail.” 

The Captain then went on to confess, with much candor, 
that up to the present time the gentlemen of England, confident 
of their right, and careless of those who questioned it, had left 
the political interest of their order as they did the management 
of their estates, or the settlement of their legal affairs, to per- 
sons affected to each peculiar service, and had permitted their 
interests to be represented in the press by professional proctors 
and advocates. That time Shandon professed to consider w T as 
now gone by : the gentlemen of England must be their own 
champions : the declared enemies of their order were brave, 
strong, numerous, and uncompromising. They must meet their 
foes in the field : they must not be belied and misrepresented 
by hireling advocates : they must not have Grub Street publish- 
ing Gazettes from Whitehall ; “ that’s a dig at Bacon’s people, 
Mr. Bungay,” said Shandon, turning round to the publisher. 

Bungay clapped his stick on the floor. “ Hang him, pitch 


PEXDEXXIS. 


331 


into him, Capting," he said with exultation : and turning to 
Warrington, wagged his dull head more vehemently than ever, 
and said, 4 * For a slashing article, sir, there's nobody like the 
Capting — no-obody like him/’ 

The prospectus-writer went on to say that some gentlemen, 
whose names were, for obvious reasons, not brought before the 
public (at which Mr. Warrington began to laugh again), had 
determined to bring forward a journal, of which the principles 
were so and so. 44 These men are proud of their order, and 
anxious to uphold it,” cried out Captain Shandon, flourishing his 
paper with a grin. “ They are loyal to their sovereign, by faith- 
ful conviction and ancestral allegiance ; they love their Church, 
where they would have their children worship, and for which 
their forefathers bled ; they love their country, and would keep 
it what the gentlemen of England — yes, the gentlemen of Eng- 
land (we’ll have that in large caps., Bungay, my boy) have made 
it — the greatest and freest in the world : and as the names of 
some of them are appended to the deed which secured our 
liberties at Runnymede — ” 

“ What’s that ? ” asked Mr. Bungay. 

44 An ancestor of mine sealed it with his sword hilt,” Pen 
said, with great gravity. 

“ It’s the Habeas Corpus, Mr. Bungay,” Warrington said, 
on which the publisher answered, “ all right, I dare say,” and 
yawned, though he said, u Go on, Capting.” 

44 — at Runnymede ; they are ready to defend that freedom 
to-dav with sword and Pen, and now. as then, to rally round 
the old laws and liberties of England.” 

4 * Brayvo ! ” cried Warrington. The little child stood won- 
dering ; the lady was working silently, and looking with fond 
admiration. 44 Come here, little Mary,” said Warrington, and 
patted the child’s fair curls with his large hand. But she 
shrank back from his rough caress, and preferred to go and 
take refuge at Pen’s knee, and play with his fine watch-chain : 
and Pen was very* much pleased that she came to him ; for he 
was very soft-hearted and simple, though he concealed his gen- 
tleness under a shy and pompous demeanor. So she clam- 
bered up on his lap, whilst her father continued to read his 
programme. 

** You were laughing,” the captain said to Warrington, 
“ about 4 the obvious reasons ’ which I mentioned. Now, I'll 
show ye what they are, ye unbelieving heathen. 4 We have 
said.' ” he went on. 4 * 4 that we cannot give th^ names of the 
parties engaged in this undertaking, and that there were obvi 


332 


PENDENNIS. 


/ 


ous reasons for that concealment. We number influential 
friends in both Houses of the Senate, and have secured allies 
in every diplomatic circle in Europe. Our sources of intelli- 
gence are such as cannot, by any possibility, be made public — 
and, indeed, such as no other London or European journal 
could, by any chance, acquire. But this we are free to say, 
that the very earliest information connected with the movement 
of English and Continental politics, will be found only in the 
columns of the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette.’ The Statesman and the 
Capitalist, the Country Gentleman, and the Divine, will be 
amongst our readers, because our writers are amongst them. 
We address ourselves to the higher circles of society • we care 
not to disown it — the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette ’ is written by gentle- 
men for gentlemen ; its conductors speak of the classes in 
which they live and were born. The field preacher has his 
journal, the radical free-thinker has his journal : why should 
the Gentlemen of England be unrepresented in the Press ? ’ ” 

Mr. Shandon then went on with much modesty to descant 
upon the literary and fashionable departments of the “ Pall 
Mall Gazette,” which were to be conducted by gentlemen of 
acknowledged reputation; men famous at the Universities (at 
which Mr. Pendennis could scarcely help laughing and blush- 
ing), known at the Clubs and of the Society which they de- 
scribed. He pointed out delicately to advertizers that there 
would be no such medium as the “ Pall Mall Gazette ” for giv- 
ing publicity to their sales ; and he eloquently called upon the 
nobility of England, the baronetage of England, the revered 
clergy of England, the bar of England, the matrons, the daugh- 
ters, the homes and hearths of England, to rally round the 
good old cause ; and Bungay at the conclusion of the reading 
woke up from a second snooze in which he had indulged him- 
self^ and again said it was all right. 

The reading of the prospectus concluded, the gentleman 
present entered into some details regarding the political and 
literary management of the paper, and Mr. Bungay sat by 
listening and nodding his head, as if he understood what was 
the subject of their conversation, and approved of their opin- 
ions. Bungay’s opinions, in truth, were pretty simple. He 
thought the captain could write the best smashing article in 
England. He wanted the opposition house of Bacon smashed, 
and it was his opinion that the captain could do that business. 
If the captain had written a letter of Junius on a sheet of paper, 
or copied a parrt>f the Church Catechism, Mr. Bungay would 
have been perfectly contented, and have considered that the 


PENDENNIS. 


333 

article was a smashing article. And he pocketed the papers 
with the greatest satisfaction : and he not only paid for the 
M.S., as we have seen, but he called little Mary to him, and 
gave her a penny as he went away. 

• The reading of the manuscript over, the part^ engaged in 
general conversation, Shandon leading with a jaunty fashion- 
able air in compliment to the two guests who sat with him, 
and who, by their appearance and manner, he presumed to be 
persons of the beau monde. He knew very little indeed of the 
great world, but he had seen it, and made the most of what he 
had seen. He spoke of the characters of the day, and great 
personages of the fashion, with easy familiarity and jocular al- 
lusions, as if it was his habit to live amongst them. He told 
anecdotes of their private life, and of conversations he had had, 
and entertainments at which he had been present, and at which 
such and such a thing occurred. Pen was amused to hear the 
shabby prisoner in a tattered dressing-gown talking glibly about 
the great of the land. Mrs. Shandon was always delighted 
when her husband told these tales, and believed in them fondly 
every one. She did not want to mingle in the fashionable world 
herself, she was not clever enough ; but the great Society was 
the very place for her Charles : he shone in it : he was re- 
spected in it. Indeed, Shandon had once been asked to din- 
ner by the Earl of X ; his wife treasured the invitation-card in 
her work-box at that very day. 

Mr. Bungay presently had enough of this talk and got up 
to take leave, whereupon Warrington and Pen rose to depart 
with the publisher, though the latter would have liked to stay to 
make a further acquaintance with this family, who interested 
him and touched him. He said something about hoping for 
permission to repeat his visit, upon which Shandon, with a rueful 
grin, said he was always to be found at home, and should be 
delighted to see Mr. Pennington. 

“ I’ll see you to my park-gate, gentlemen,” said Captain 
Shandon, seizing his hat, in spite of a deprecatory look, and a 
faint cry of “ Charles ” from Mrs. Shandon. And the captain, 
in shabby slippers, shuffled out before his guftts, leading the 
way through the dismal passages of the prison. His hand was 
already fiddling with his waistcoat pocket, where Bungay’s five- 
pound note was, as he took leave of the three gentlemen at the 
wicket ; one of them, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, being greatly re- 
lieved when he was out of the horrid place, and again freely 
treading the flags of Farringdon street. 

Mrs. Shandon sadly went on with her work at the window 


PENDENNIS . 


334 

■looking into the court. She saw Shandon with a couple of 
men at his heels run rapidly in the direction of the prison 
tavern. She had hoped to have had him to dinner herself that 
day : there was a piece of meat,' and some salad in a basin, on 
the ledge outside of the window of the room, which she had 
expected that she and little Mary were to share with the child’s 
father. But there was no chance of that now. He would be 
in the tavern until the hours for closing it ; then he would go 
and play at cards or drink in some other man’s room, and 
come back silent, with glazed eyes, reeling a little in his walk, 
that his wife might nurse him. Oh, what varieties of pain do 
we not make our women suffer ! 

So Mrs. Shannon went to the cupboard, and, in lieu of a 
dinner, made herself some tea. And in those varieties of pain 
of which we spoke anon, what a part of confidante has that 
poor teapot played ever since the kindly plant was introduced 
among us ! What myriads of women have cried over it, to be 
sure ! What sick-beds it has smoked by ! What fevered lips 
have received refreshment from out of it ! Nature meant very 
gently by women when she made that tea-plant. With a little 
thought what series of pictures and groups the fancy may con- 
jure up and assemble round the teapot and cup. Melissa and 
Sacharissa are talking love secrets over it. Poor. Polly has it 
and her lover’s letters upon the table ; his letters who was her 
lover yesterday, and when it was with pleasure, not despair, she 
wept over them. Mary comes tripping noiselessly into her 
mother’s bedroom, bearing a cup of the consoler to the widow 
who will take no other food, Ruth is busy concocting it for 
her husband, who is coming home from the harvest field — one 
could fill a page with hints for such pictures ; — finally, Mrs. 
Shandon and little Mary sit down and drink their tea together, 
while the Captain goes out and takes his pleasure. She cares 
for nothing else but that, when her husband is away. 

A gentleman with whom we are already slightly acquainted, 
Mr. Jack Finucane, a townsman of Captain, Shandon’s, found 
the Captain’s wife and little Mary (for whom Jack always 
brought a sweetmeat in his pocket) over this meal. Jack 
thought Shandon the greatest of created geniuses, and had one 
or two helps from the good-natured prodigal, who had always a 
kind word, and sometimes a guinea for any friend in need ; and 
never missed a day in seeing his patron. He was ready to run 
Shandon’s errands and transact his money-business with pub- 
lishers and newspaper editors, duns, creditors, holders of Shan- 
don’s acceptances, gentlemen disposed to speculate in those 


PENDENNIS. 


33 5 

securities, and to transact the thousand little affairs of an em- 
barrassed Irish gentleman. I never knew an embarrassed 
Irish gentleman yet, but he had an aide-de-camp of his own 
nation, likewise in circumstances of pecuniary discomfort. 
That aide-de-camp has subordinates of his own, who again may 
have other insolvent dependents — all through his life our Cap- 
tain marched at the head of a ragged staff, who shared in the 
rough fortunes of their chieftain. 

“He won’t have that five-pound note very long, I bet a 
guinea,” Mr. Bungay said of the Captain, as he and his two 
companions walked away from the prison ; and the publisher 
judged rightly, for when Mrs. Shandon came to empty her hus- 
band’s pockets, she found but a couple of shillings, and a few 
halfpence out of the morning’s remittance. Shandon had 
given a pound to one follower; had sent a leg of mutton and 
potatoes and beer to an acquaintance in the poor side of the 
prison ; had paid an outstanding bill at the tavern where he 
had changed his five-pound note ; had had a dinner with two 
friends there, to whom he lost sundry half-crowns at cards 
afterwards ; so that the night left him as poor as the morning 
had found him. 

The publisher and the two gentlemen had had some talk 
together after quitting Shandon, and Warrington reiterated to 
Bungay what he had said to his rival, Bacon, viz., that Pen 
was a high fellow, of great genius, and what was more, well 
with the great world, and related to “ no end ” of the peerage. 
Bungay replied that he should be happy to have dealings with 
Mr. Pendennis, and hoped to have the pleasure of seeing both 
gents to cut mutton with him before long, and so. with mutual 
politeness and protestations, they parted. 

“ It is hard to see such a man as Shandon,” Pen said, mus- 
ing, and talking that night over the sight which he had wit- 
nessed, “ of accomplishments so multifarious, and of such an 
undoubted talent and humor, an inmate of a jail for half his 
time, and a bookseller’s hanger-on when out of prison.” 

“ I am a bookseller’s hanger-on — you are going to try your 
paces as a hack,” Warrington said with a laugh. “We are all 
hacks upon some road or other. I would rather be myself, 
than Paley our neighbor in chambers : who has as much enjoy- 
ment of his life as a mole. A deuced deal of undeserved com- 
passion has been thrown away upon what you call your book- 
seller’s drudge.” 

“ Much solitary pipes and ale make a cynic of you,” Pen 


PENDENNIS. 


33 6 

said. “ You are a Diogenes by a beer-barrei, Warrington. No 
man shall tell me that a man of genius, as Shandon is, ought 
to be driven by such a vulgar slave-driver as yonder Mr. Bun- 
gay, whom we have just left, who fattens on the profits of the 
other’s brains, and enriches himself out of his journeyman’s 
labor. It makes me indignant to see a gentleman the serf of 
such a creature as that, of a man who can’t speak the language 
that he lives by, who is not fit to black Shandon’s boots.” 

So you have begun already to gird at the publishers, and to 
take your side amongst our order. Bravo, Pen, my boy ! ” 
Warrington answered, laughing still. “ What have you got to 
say against Bungay’s relations with Shandon? Was it the pub- 
lisher, think you, who sent the author to prison ? Is it Bungay 
who is tippling away the five-pound note which we saw just 
now, or Shandon ? ” 

“ Misfortune drives a man into bad company,” Pen said. 
“ It is easy to cry ‘ Fie ! ’ against a poor fellow who has no 
society but such as he finds in a prison ; and no resource ex- 
cept forgetfulness and the bottle. We must Meal kindly with 
the eccentricities of genius, and remember that the very ardor 
and enthusiasm of temperament which makes the author de- 
lightful often leads the man astray.” 

“A fiddlestick about men of genius ! ” Warrington cried out, 
who was a very severe moralist upon some points, though 
possibly a very bad practitioner. “ I deny that there are so 
many geniuses as people who whimper about the fate of men of 
letters assert there are. There are thousands of clever fellows 
in the world who could, if they would, turn verses, write articles, 
read books, and deliver a judgment upon them ; the talk of pro- 
fessional critics and writers is not a whit more brilliant, or pro- 
found, or amusing, than that of any other society of educated 
people. If a lawyer, or a soldier, or a parson, outruns his in- 
come, and does not pay his bills, he must go to jail ; and an 
author must go, too. If an author fuddles himself, I don’t know 
why he should be let off a headache the next morning, — 
if he orders a coat from the tailor’s, why he shouldn’t pay 
for it.” 

“ I would give him more money to buy coats,” said Pen, 
smiling. “ I suppose I should like to belong to a well-dressed 
profession. I protest against that wretch of a middle-man 
whom I see between Genius and his great landlord, the Public, 
and who stops more than half of the laborer’s earnings and fame.” 

“I am a prose laborer,” Warrington said; “you, my boy, 
are a poet in a small way, and so, I suppose, consider you are 


PENDENtfIS. 


337 

authorized to be flighty. What is it you want r Do you want 
a body of capitalists that shall be forced to purchase the works 
of all authors, who may present themselves, manuscript in hand ? 
Everybody who writes his epic, every driveller who can or can’t 
spell, and produces his novel or his tragedy, — are they all to 
come and find a bag of sovereigns in exchange for their worth- 
less reams of paper ? Who is to settle what is good or bad, 
saleable or otherwise ? Will you give the buyer leave, in fine, 
to purchase or not ? Why, sir, when Johnson sat behind the 
screen at Saint John’s Gate, and took his dinner apart, because 
he was too shabby and poor to join the literary bigwigs who 
were regaling themselves round Mr. Cave’s best table-cloth, the 
tradesman was doing him no wrong. You couldn’t force the 
publisher to recognize the man of genius in the young man who 
presented himself before him, ragged, gaunt, and hungry. Rags 
are not a proof of genius; whereas capital is absolute, as times 
go, and is perforce the bargain-master. It has a right to deal 
with the literary inventor as with any other ; — if I produce a 
novelty in the book trade, I must do the best I can with it ; but 
I can no more force Mr. Murray to purchase my book of travels 
or sermons, than I can compel Mr. Tattersall to give me a 
hundred guineas for my horse. I may have my own ideas of 
the value of my Pegasus, and think him the most wonderful of 
animals ; but the dealer has a right to his opinion, too, and may 
want a lady’s horse, or a cob for a heavy timid rider, or a sound 
hack for the road, and my beast won’t suit him.” 

“You deal in metaphors, Warrington,” Pen said; but you 
rightly say that you are very prosaic. Poor Shandon ! There 
is something about the kindness of that man, and the gentleness 
of that sweet creature of a wife, which touches me profoundly. 
I like him, I am afraid, better than a better man.” 

“And so do I,” Warrington said. “Let us give him the 
benefit of our sympathy, and the pity that is due to his weak- 
ness : though I fear that sort of kindness would be resented as 
contempt by a more high-minded man. You see he takes his 
consolation along with his misfortune, and one generates the 
other or balances it, as is the way of the world. He is a pris- 
oner, but he is not unhappy.” 

“ His genius sings within his prison bars,” Pen said. 

“ Yes,” Warrington said, bitterly ; “ Shandon accommodates 
himself to a cage pretty well. He ought to be wretched, but 
he has Jack and Tom to drink with, and that consoles him : he 
might have a high place, but as he can’t, why he can drink with 
Tom and J ack ; — he might be providing for his wife and chil- 

22 


PENDENNIS. 


338 

dren, but Thomas and John have got a bottle ot brandy which 
they want him to taste : — he might pay poor Snip, the tailor, the 
twenty pounds which the poor devil wants for his landlord, but 
John and Thomas lay their hands upon his purse ; — and so he 
drinks whilst his tradesman goes to jail and his family to ruin. 
Let us pity the misfortunes of genius, and conspire against the 
publishing tyrants who oppress men of letters.” 

“ What ! are you going to have another glass of brandy-and- 
water ? ” Pen said, with a humorous look. It was at the Back 
Kitchen that the above philosophical conversation took place 
between the two young men. 

Warrington began to laugh as usual. “ Video meliora pro- 
boque — I mean, bring it me hot, with sugar, John,” he said to 
the waiter. 

“ I would have some more, too, only I don’t want it,” said 
Pen. “ It does not seem to me, Warrington, that we are much 
better than our neighbors.” And Warrington’s last glass 
having been despatched, the pair returned to their chambers. 

They found a couple of notes in the letter-box, on their re- 
turn, which had been sent by their acquaintance of the morning, 
Mr. Bungay. That hospitable gentleman presented his com- 
pliments to each of the gentlemen, and requested the pleasure 
of their company at dinner on an early day, to meet a few literary 
friends. 

“ We shall have a grand spread,” said Warrington. “ We 
shall meet all Bungay’s corps.” 

“ All except poor Shandon,” said Pen, nodding a good-night 
to his friend, and he went into his own little room. The events 
and acquaintances of the day had excited him a good deal, and 
he lay for some time awake thinking over them, as Warrington’s 
vigorous and regular snore from the neighboring apartment 
pronounced that that gentleman was engaged in deep slumber. 

Is it true, thought Pendennis, lying on his bed and gazing at 
a bright moon without, that lighted up a corner of his dressing- 
table, and the frame of a little sketch of Fairoaks drawn by 
Laura, that hung over his drawers — is it true that I am going to 
earn my bread at last, and with my pen ? that I shall impoverish 
the dear mother no longer ; and that I may gain a name and 
reputation in the world, perhaps ? These are welcome if they 
come, thought the young visionary, laughing and blushing to 
himself, though alone and in the night, as he thought how dearly 
he would relish honor and fame if they could be his. If fortune 
favors me, I laud her ; if she frowns, I resign her. I pray 


PENDENNIS. 


339 


Heaven I may be honest if I fail, or if I succeed. I pray 
Heaven I may tell the truth as far as I know it : that I mayn’t 
swerve from it through flattery, or interest, or personal enmity, 
or party prejudice. Dearest old mother, what a pride will you 
have, if I can do anything worthy of our name ! and you, Laura, 
you won’t scorn me as the worthless idler and spendthrift, when 
you see that I — when I have achieved a — psha! what an 
Alnaschar I am because I have made five pounds by my poems, 
and am engaged to write half a dozen articles for a newspaper. 
He went on with these musings, more happy and hopeful, and 
in a humbler frame of mind, than he had felt to be for many a 
day. He thought over the errors and idleness, the passions, 
extravagances, disappointments, of his wayward youth : he got 
up from the bed : threw open the window, and looked out into 
the night : and then, by some impulse, which we hope was a 
good one, he went up and kissed the picture of Fairoaks, and 
flinging himself down on his knees by the bed, remained for 
some time in that posture of hope and submission. When he 
rose, it was with streaming eyes. He had found himself repeat- 
ing, mechanically, some little words which he had been accus- 
tomed to repeat as a child at his mother’s side, after the saying 
of which she would softly take him to his bed and close the 
curtains round him, hushing him with a benediction. 

The next day, Mr. Pidgeon, their attendant, brought in a 
large brown-paper parcel, directed to G. Warrington, Esq., with 
Mr. Trotter’s compliments, and a note which Warrington read. 

“ Pen, you beggar ! ” roared Warrington to Pen, who was in 
his own room. 

“ Hullo ! ” sung out Pen. 

“ Come here, you’re wanted,” cried the other, and Pen came 
out. “ What is it ? ” said he. 

“ Catch!” cried Warrington, and flung the parcel at Pen’s 
head, who would have been knocked down had he not 
caught it. 

“ It’s books for review for the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette ; ’ pitch 
into ’em,” Warrington said. As for Pen, he never had been so 
delighted in his life : his hand trembled as he cut the string of 
the packet, and beheld within a smart set of new neat calico- 
bound books, travels, and novels, and poems. 

“ Sport the oak, Pidgeon,” said he. “ I’m not at home to 
anybody to-day.” And he flung into his easy chair, and hardly 
gave himself time to drink his tea, so eager was he to begin to 
read and to review. 


34 ° 


PEND ENNIS. 


CHAPTER XXXIII. 

IN WHICH THE HISTORY STILL HOVERS ABOUT FLEET STREET. 

Captain Shandon, urged on by his wife, who seldom med- 
dled in business matters, had stipulated that John Finucane, 
Esquire, of the Upper Temple, should be appointed sub-editor 
of the forthcoming “ Pall Mall Gazette,” and this post was ac- 
cordingly conferred upon Mr. Finucane by the spirited proprie- 
tor of the Journal. Indeed he deserved any kindness at the 
hands of Shandon, so fondly attached was he, as we have said, 
to the Captain and his family, and so eager to do him a service. 
It was in Finucane’s chambers that Shandon used in former 
days to hide when danger was near and bailiffs abroad : until 
at length his hiding-place was known, and the sheriff’s officers 
came as regularly to wait for the Captain on Finucane’s stair- 
case as at his own door. It was to Finucane’s chambers that 
poor Mrs. Shandon came often and often to explain her troubles 
and griefs, and devise means of rescue for her adored Captain. 
Many a meal did Finucane furnish for her and the child there. 
It was an honor to his little rooms to be visited by such a 
lady ; and as she went down the staircase with her veil over 
her face, Fin would lean over the balustrade looking after her, 
to see that no Temple Lovelace assailed her upon the road, 
perhaps hoping that some rogue might be induced to waylay 
her, so that he, Fin, might have the pleasure of rushing to her 
rescue, "and breaking the rascal’s bones. It was a sincere 
pleasure to Mrs. Shandon when the arrangements were made 
by which her kind honest champion was appointed her hus- 
band’s aide-de-camp in the newspaper. 

He would have sat with Mrs. Shandon as late as the prison 
hours permitted, and had indeed many a time witnessed the 
putting to bed of little Mary, who occupied a crib in the room ; 
and to whose evening prayers that God might bless papa, Fin- 
ucane, although of the Romish faith himself, had said Amen 
with a great deal of sympathy — but he had an appointment 
with Mr. Bungay regarding the affairs of the paper which they 
were to discuss over a quiet dinner. So he went away at six 
o’clock from Mrs. Shandon, but made his accustomed appear- 
ance at the Fleet Prison next morning, having arrayed himself 
in his best clothes and ornaments, which, though cheap as to 


PEND ENNIS. 


34i 


cost, were very brilliant as to color and appearance, and having 
in his pocket four pounds two shillings, being the amount of 
his week’s salary at the “ Daily Journal,” minus two shillings 
expended by him in the purchase of a pair of gloves on his way 
to the prison. 

He had cut his mutton with Mr. Bungay, as the latter gen- 
tleman phrased it, and Mr. Trotter, Bungay’s reader and 
literary man of business, at Dick’s Coffee-House on the pre- 
vious day, and entered at large into his views respecting the 
conduct of the “ Pall Mall Gazette.” In a masterly manner he 
had pointed out what should be the sub-editorial arrangements 
of the paper : what should be the type for the various articles : 
who should report the markets ; who the turf and ring ; who 
the Church intelligence ; and who the fashionable chit-chat. 
He was acquainted with gentlemen engaged in cultivating those 
various departments of knowledge, and in communicating them 
afterwards to the public — in fine, Jack Finucane was, as Shandon 
had said of him, and, as he proudly owned himself to be, one 
of the best sub-editors of a paper in London. He knew the 
weekly earnings of every man connected with the Press, and 
was up to a thousand dodges, or _ ingenious economic contri- 
vances, by which money could be saved to spirited capitalists, 
who were going to set up a paper. He at once dazzled and 
mystified Mr. Bungay, who was slow of comprehension, by the 
rapidity of the calculations which he exhibited on paper, as 
they sat in the box. And Bungay afterwards owned to his 
subordinate Mr. Trotter, that that Irishman seemed a clever 
fellow. 

And now having succeeded in making this' impression upon 
Mr. Bungay, the faithful fellow worked round to the point which 
he had very near at heart, viz., the liberation from prison of 
his admired friend and chief, Captain Shandon. He knew to a 
shilling the amount of the detainers which were against the 
Captain at the porter’s lodge of the Fleet ; and, indeed, pro- 
fessed to know all his debts, though this was impossible, for 
no man in England, certainly not the Captain himself, was 
acquainted with them. He pointed out what Shandon’s en- 
gagements already were ; and how much better he would work 
if removed from confinement (though this Mr. Bungay denied, 
for, “when the Captain’s locked up,” he said, “we are sure to 
find him at home ; whereas, when he’s free, you can never 
catch hold of him ”) ; finally, he so worked on Mr. Bungay’s 
feelings, by describing Mrs. Shandon pining away in the prison, 
and the child sickening there, that the publisher was induced 


342 


PENDENNIS. 


to promise that, if Mrs. Shandon would come to him in the 
morning, he would see what could be done. And the colloquy 
ending at this time with the second round of brandy-and- 
water, although Finucane, who had four guineas in his pocket, 
would have discharged the tavern reckoning with delight, Bun- 
gay said, “ No, sir, — this is my affair, sir, if you please. 
James, take the bill, and eighteenpence for yourself,” and he 
handed over the necessary funds to the waiter. Thus it was 
that Finucane, who went to bed at the Temple after the dinner 
at Dick’s, found himself actually with his week’s salary intact 
upon Saturday morning. 

He gave Mrs. Shandon a wink so knowing and joyful, that 
that kind creature knew some good news was in store for her, 
and hastened to get her bonnet and shawl, when Fin asked if 
he might have the honor of taking her a walk, and giving her a 
little fresh air. And little Mary jumped for joy at the idea of 
this holiday, for Finucane never neglected to give her a toy, or 
to take her to a show, and brought newspaper orders in his 
pocket for all sorts of London diversions to amuse the child. 
Indeed, he loved them with all his heart, and would cheerfully 
have dashed out his rambling brains to do them, or his adored 
Captain, a service. 

“ May I go, Charley ? or shall I stay with you, for you’re 
poorly, dear, this morning ? He’s got a headache, Mr. Finu- 
cane. He suffers from headaches, and I persuaded him to 
stay in bed,” Mrs. Shandon said. 

“Go along with you, and Polly. Jack, take care of ’em. 
Hand me over the Burton’s Anatomy, and leave me to my 
abominable devices,” Shandon said, with perfect good-humor. 
He was writing, and not uncommonly took his Greek and Latin 
quotations (of which he knew the use as a public writer) from 
that wonderful repertory of learning. 

So Fin gave his arm to Mrs. Shandon, and Mary went skip- 
ping down the passages of the prison, and through the gate 
into the free air. From Fleet Street to Paternoster Row is not 
very far. As the th^ee reached Mr. Bungay’s shop, Mrs. Bun- 
gay was also entering at the private door, holding in her hand 
a paper parcel and a manuscript volume bound in red, and, in- 
deed, containing an account of her transactions with the butcher 
in the neighboring market. Mrs. Bungay was in a gorgeous 
shot silk dress, which flamed with red and purple ; she wore a 
yellow shawl, and had red flowers inside her bonnet, and a 
brilliant light-blue parasol. Mrs. Shandon was in an old black 
watered silk ; her bonnet had never seen very brilliant days of 


PENDENNIS. 


343 


prosperity any more than its owner, but she could not help 
looking like a lady whatever her attire was. The two women 
curtsied to each other, each according to her fashion. 

“ I hope you’re pretty well, Mum ? ” said Mrs. Bungay. 

“ It’s a very fine day,” said Mrs. Shandon. 

“Won’t you step in, Mum ? ” said Mrs. Bungay, looking so 
hard at the child as almost to firighten her. 

“ I — I came about business with Mr. Bungay — I — I hope 
he’s pretty well? ” said timid Mrs. Shandon. 

“ If you go to see him in the counting-house, couldn’t you — 
couldn’t you leave your little gurl with me ? ” said Mrs. Bun- 
gay, in a deep voice, and with a tragic look, as she held out 
one finger towards the child. 

“ I want to stay with mamma,” cried little Mary, burying 
her face in her mother’s dress. 

“ Go with this lady, Mary, my dear,” said the mother. 

“ I’ll show you some pretty pictures,” said Miss Bungay, 
with the voice of an ogress, “ and some nice things besides ; 
look here” — and opening her brown-paper parcel, Mrs. Bifn- 
gay displayed some choice sweet biscuits, such as her Bungay 
loved after his wine. Little Mary followed after this attraction, 
the whole party entering at the private entrance, from which a 
side door led into Mr. Bungay’s commercial apartments. Here, 
however, as the child was about to part from her mother, her 
courage again failed her, and again she ran to the maternal 
petticoat ; upon which the kind and gentle Mrs. Shandon, see- 
ing the look of disappointment in Mrs. Bungay’s face, good- 
naturedly said, “ If you will let me, I will come up too, and 
sit for a few minutes,” and so the three females ascended the 
stairs together. A second biscuit charmed little Mary into per- 
fect confidence, and in a minute or two she prattled away with- 
out the least restraint. 

Faithful Finucane meanwhile found Mr. Bungay in a severer 
mood than he had been on the night previous, when two-thirds 
of a bottle of port, and two large glasses of brandy-and-water, 
had warmed his soul into enthusiasm, and made him generous 
in his promises towards Captain Shandon. His impetuous 
wife had rebuked him on his return home. She had ordered 
that he should give no relief to the Captain ; he was a good- 
for nothing fellow, whom no money would help ; she disapproved 
of the plan of the “ Pall Mall Gazette,” and expected that 
Bungay would only lose his money in it as they were losing 
over the way (she always called her brother’s establishment 
“ over the way ”) by the “ Whitehall Journal.” Let Shandon 


PENDENNIS. 


344 

stop in prison and do his work ^ it was the best place for him. 
In vain Finucane pleaded and promised and implored, for his 
friend Bungay had had an hour’s lecture in the morning and 
was inexorable. 

But what honest Jack failed to do below stairs in the count- 
ing-house, the pretty faces and manners of the mother and 
child were effecting in the drawing-room, where they were melt- 
ing the fierce but really soft Mrs. Bungay. There was an art- 
less sweetness in Mrs. Shandon’s voice, and a winning frank- 
ness of manner, which made most people fond of her, and pity 
her : and taking courage by the rugged kindness with which her 
hostess received her, the Captain’s lady told her story, and 
described her husband’s goodness and virtues, and her child’s 
failing health (she was obliged to part with two of them, she 
said, and send them to school, for she could not have them in 
that horrid place) — that Mrs. Bungay, though as grim as Lady 
Macbeth, melted under the influence of the simple tale, and 
said she would go down and speak to Bungay. Now in this 
household to speak was to command, with Mrs. Bungay ; and 
with Bungay, to hear was to obey. 

It was just when poor Finucane was in despair about his 
negotiation, that the majestic Mrs. Bungay descended upon her 
spouse, politely requested Mr. Finucane to step up to his friends 
in her drawing-room, while she held a few minutes’ conversa- 
tion with Mr. B., and when the pair were alone the publisher’s 
better half informed him of her intentions towards the Cap- 
tain’s lady. 

“ What’s in the wind now, my dear ? ” Maecenas asked, 
surprised at his wife’s altered tone. “ You wouldn’t hear of 
my doing anything for the Captain this morning : I wonder 
what has been a changing of you.” 

“ The Capting is an Irishman,” Mrs. Bungay replied ; 
“ and those Irish I have always said I couldn’t abide. But his 
wife is a lady, as any one can see ; and a good woman, and a 
clergyman’s daughter, and a West of England woman, B., 
which I am myself, by my mother’s side — and O Marmaduke. 
didn’t you remark her little gurl ? ” 

“Yes, Mrs. B., I saw the little girl.” 

“ And didn’t you see how like she was to our angel, Bessy, 
Mr. B. ? ” — and Mrs. Bungay’s thoughts flew back to a period 
eighteen years back, when Bacon and Bungay had just set up 
in business as small booksellers in a country town, and when 
she had had a child, named Bessy, something like the little 
Mary who had just moved her compassion. 


PENDENNIS. 


345 

“ Well, well, my dear,” Mr. Bungay said, seeing the little 
eyes of his wife begin to twinkle and grow red ; “ the Captain 
ain’t in for much. There’s only a hundred and thirty pound 
against him. Half the money will take him out of the Fleet, 
Finucane says, and we’ll pay him half salaries till he has made 
the account square. When the little ’un said, * Why don’t you 
take Par out of pizn ? ” I did feel it, Elizabeth, upon my 
honor I did, now.” And the upshot of this conversation was, 
that Mr. and Mrs. Bungay both ascended to the drawing-room, 
and Mr. Bungay made a heavy and clumsy speech, in which he 
announced to Mrs. Shandon, that, hearing sixty-five pounds 
would set her husband free, he was ready to advance that sum 
of money, deducting it from the Captain’s salary, and that he 
would give it to her on condition that she would personally set- 
tle with the creditors regarding her husband’s liberation. 

I think this was the happiest day that Mrs. Shandon and 
Mr. Finucane had had for a long time. “ Bedad, Bungay, you’re 
a trump ! ” roared out Fin, in an overpowering brogue and emo- 
tion. “ Give us your fist, old boy : and won’t we send the ‘ Pall 
Mall Gazette ’ up to ten thousand a week, that’s all ! ” and he 
jumped about the room, and tossed up little Mary, with a hun- 
dred frantic antics. 

“ If I could drive you anywhere in my carriage, Mrs. Shan- 
don — I’m sure it’s quite at your service,” Mrs. Bungay said, 
looking out at a one-horsed vehicle which had just driven up, 
and in which this lady took the air considerably — and the two 
ladies, with little Mary between them (whose tiny hand Maece- 
nas’s wife kept fixed in her great grasp), with the delighted Mr. 
Finucane on the back seat, drove away from Paternoster Row, 
as the owner of the vehicle threw triumphant glances at the 
opposite windows at Bacon’s. 

“It won’t do the Captain any good,” thought Bungay, going 
back to his desk and accounts, “ but Mrs. B. becomes reglar 
upset when she thinks about her misfortune. The child would 
have been of age yesterday, if she’d lived. Bessy told me so ; ” 
and he wondered how women did remember things. 

We are happy to say that Mrs. Shandon sped with very good 
success upon her errand. She who had had to mollify creditors 
when she had no money at all, and only tears and entreaties 
wherewith to soothe them, found no difficulty in making them 
relent by means of a bribe of ten shillings in the pound ; and 
the next Sunday was the last, for some time at least, which the 
Captain spent in prison. 


34 $ 


PEND ENNIS. 


CHAPTER 2&XIV. 

A DINNER IN THE ROW. 

Upon the appointed day our two friends made their appear- 
ance at Mr. Bungay’s door in Paternoster Row ; not the public 
entrance through which booksellers’ boys issued with their sacks 
full of Bungay’s volumes, and around which timid aspirants lin- 
gered with their virgin manuscripts ready for sale to Sultan 
Bungay, but at the private door of the house, whence the 
splendid Mrs. Bungay would come forth to step into her chaise 
and take her drive, settling herself on the cushions, and cast- 
ing looks of defiance at Mrs. Bacon’s opposite windows — at Mrs. 
Bacon, who was as yet a chaiseless woman. 

On such occasions, when very much wroth at her sister-in- 
law’s splendor, Mrs. Bacon would fling up the sash of her draw- 
ing-room window, and look out with her four children at the 
chaise, as much as to say, “ Look at these four darlings, Flora 
Bungay ! This is why I can’t drive in my carriage ; you would 
give a coach-and-four to have the same reason.” And it was 
with these arrows out of her quiver that Emma Bacon shot 
Flora Bungay as she sat in her chariot envious and childless. 

As Pen and Warrington came to Bungay’s door, a carriage 
and a cab drove up to Bacon’s. Old Dr. Slocum descended 
heavily from the first ; the Doctor’s equipage was as ponderous 
as his style, but both had a fine sonorous effect upon the pub- 
lishers in the Row. A couple of dazzling white waistcoats 
stepped out of the cab. 

Warrington laughed. You see Bacon has his dinner party 
too. That is Dr. Slocum, author of ‘ Memoirs of the Poisoners.’ 
You would hardly have recognized our friend Hoolan in that 
gallant white waistcoat. Doolan is one of Bungay’s men, and, 
faith, here he comes. Indeed Messrs. Hoolan and Doolan had 
come from the Strand in the same cab, tossing up by the way 
which should pay the shilling : and Mr. D. stepped from the 
other side of the way, arrayed in black, with a large pair of 
white gloves which were spread out on his hands, and which 
the owner could not help regarding with pleasure. 

The house porter in an evening coat, and gentlemen with 
gloves as large as Doolan’s, but of the famous Berlin web, were 
on the passage of Mr. Bungay’s house to receive the guests’ 


PENDENNIS. 


347 


hats and coats, and bawl their names up the stair. Some of the 
latter had arrived when the three new visitors made their 
appearance ; but there was only Mrs. Bungay, in red satin and 
a turban, to represent her own charming sex. She made curtseys 
to each new comer as he entered the drawing-room, but her 
mind was evidently pre-occupied by extraneous thoughts. The 
fact is, Mrs. Bacon’s dinner-party was disturbing her, and as 
soon as she had received each individual of her own company, 
Flora Bungay flew back to the embrasure of the window, whence 
she could rake the carriages of Emma Bacon’s friends as they 
came rattling up the Row. The sight of Dr. Slocum’s large 
carriage, with the gaunt job-horses, crushed • Flora : none but 
hack cabs had driven up to her own door on that day. 

They were all literary gentlemen, though unknown as yet to 
Pen. There was Mr. Bole, the real editor of the magazine of 
which Mr. Wagg was the nominal chief ; Mr. Trotter, who, from 
having broken out on the world as a poet of a tragic and suicidal 
cast, had now subsided into one of Mr. Bungay’s back shops as 
reader for that gentleman ; and Captain Sumph, an ex-beau 
still about town, and related in some indistinct manner to 
Literature and the Peerage. He was said to have written a 
book once, to have been a friend of Lord Byron, to be related 
to Lord Sumphington ; in fact, anecdotes of Byron formed his 
staple, and he seldom spoke but with the name of that poet or 
some of his contemporaries in his mouth, as thus : “ I remember 
poor Shelley at school being sent up for good for a copy of 
verses, every line of which I wrote, by Jove or, “ I recollect, 
when I was at Missolonghi with Byron, offering to bet Gamba,” 
and so forth. This gentleman, Pen remarked, was listened to 
with great attention by Mrs. Bungay ; his anecdotes of the 
aristocracy, of which he was a middle-aged member, delighted 
the publisher’s lady ; and he was almost a greater man than 
the great Mr. Wagg himself in her eyes. Had he but come in 
his own carriage, Mrs. Bungay would have made her Bungay 
purchase any given volume from his pen. 

Mr. Bungay went about to his guests as they arrived, and 
did the honors of his house with much cordiality. “ How are 
you, sir ? Fine day, sir. Glad to see you year, sir. Flora, my 
love, let me ave the honor of introducing Mr. Warrington to 
you. Mr. Warrington, Mrs. Bungay ; Mr. Pendennis, Mrs. 
Bungay. Hope you have brought good appetites with you, 
gentlemen. You, Doolan, I know ave, for you’ve always ad a 
deuce of a twist.” 

“ Lor, Bungay ! ” said Mrs, Bungay 


348 


PENDENNIS. 


“ Faith, a man must be hard to please, Bungay, who can’t 
eat a good dinner in this house,” Doolan said, and he winked 
and stroked his lean chops with his large gloves ; and made 
appeals of friendship to Mrs. Bungay, which that honest woman 
refused with scorn from the timid man. “ She couldn’t abide 
that Doolan,” she said in confidence to her friends. Indeed, 
all his flatteries failed to win her. 

As they talked, Mrs. Bungay surveying mankind from her 
window, a magnificent vision of an enormous gray cab-horse 
appeared, and neared rapidly. A pair of white reins, held by 
small white gloves, were visible behind it ; a face pale, but 
richly decorated with a chin-tuft, the head of an exiguous groom 
bobbing over the cab-head — these bright things were revealed 
to the delighted Mrs. Bungay. “The Honorable Percy Pop- 
joy’s quite punctual, I declare,” she said, and sailed to the door 
to be in waiting at the nobleman’s arrival. 

“ It’s Percy Popjoy,” said Pen, looking out of window, and 
seeing an individual, in extremely lacquered boots, descend 
from the swinging cab : and, in fact, it was that young noble- 
man — Lord Falconet’s eldest son, as we all very well know, 
who was come to dine with the publisher — his publisher of the 
Row. 

“ He was my fag at Eton,” Warrington said. “ I ought to' 
have licked him a little more.” He and Pen had had some 
bouts at the Oxbridge Union debates, in which Pen had had 
very much the better of Percy : who presently appeared, with 
his hat under his arm, and a look of indescribable good-humor 
and fatuity in his round dimpled face, upon which Nature had 
burst out with a chin-tuft, but, exhausted with the effort, had 
left the rest of the countenance bare of hair. 

The temporary groom of the chambers bawled out, “ The 
Honorable Percy Popjoy,” much to that gentleman’s discom- 
posure at hearing his titles announced. 

“ What did the man want to take away my hat for, Bungay ? ” 
he asked of the publisher. “ Can’t do without my hat — want 
it to make my bow to Mrs. Bungay. How well you look, Mrs. 
Bungay, to-day. Haven’t seen your carriage in the Park : why 
haven’t you been there ? I missed you, indeed, I did.” 

“ I’m afraid you’re a sad quiz,” said Mrs. Bungay. 

“ Quiz ! Never made a joke in my — hullo ! who’s here ? 
How d’ye do, Pendennis ? How d’ye do, Warrington ? These 
are old friends of mine, Mrs. Bungay. I say, how the doose 
did you come here ? ” he asked of the two young men, turning 
his lacquered heels upon Mrs. Bungay, who respected her hus* 


PENDENNIS. 


349 


band’s two young guests, now that she found they were intimate 
with a lord’s son. 

“ What ! do they know him ? ” she asked rapidly of Mr. B. 

“ High fellers, I tell you — the young one related to all the 
nobility,” said the publisher ; and both ran forward, smiling 
and bowing, to greet almost as great personages as the young 
lord — no less characters, indeed, than the great Mr. Wenham 
and the great Mr. Wagg, who were now announced. 

Mr. Wenham entered, wearing the usual demure look and 
stealthy smile with which he commonly surveyed the tips of his 
neat little shining boots, and which he but seldom brought to 
bear upon the person who addressed him. Wagg’s white waist- 
coat, spread out, on the contrary, with profuse brilliancy ; his 
burly, red face shone resplendent over it, lighted up with the 
thoughts of good jokes and a good dinner. He liked to make 
his entrh into a drawing-room with a laugh, and, when he went 
away at night, to leave a joke exploding behind him. No per- 
sonal calamities or distresses (of which that humorist had his 
share in common with the jocular part of mankind) could alto- 
gether keep his humor down. Whatever his griefs might be, 
the thought of a dinner rallied his great soul ; and when he saw 
a lord, he saluted him with a pun. 

Wenham went up, then, with a smug smile and whisper, to 
Mrs. Bungay, and looked at her from under his eyes, and 
showed her the tips of his shoes. Wagg said she looked charm- 
ing, and pushed on straight at the young nobleman, whom he 
called Pop ; and to whom he instantly related a funny story, 
seasoned with what the French call gros set. He was delighted 
to see Pen, too, and shook hands with him, and slapped him 
on the back cordially ; for he was full of spirits and good- 
humor. And he talked in a loud voice "about their last place 
and occasion of meeting at Baymouth ; and asked how their 
friends of Clavering Park were, and whether Sir Francis was 
not coming to London for the season ; and whether Pen had 
been to see Lady Rockminster, who had arrived — fine old lady, 
Lady Rockminster ! These remarks Wagg made not for Pen’s 
ear so much as for the edification of the company, whom he 
was glad to inform that he paid visits to gentlemen’s country 
seats, and was on intimate terms with the nobility. 

Wenham also shook hands with our young friend — all of 
which scenes Mrs. Bungay remarked with respectful pleasure, 
and communicated her ideas to Bungay, afterwards, regarding 
the importance of Mr. Pendennis — ideas by which Pen nrofited 
much more than he was aware. 


35 ° 


PEiVD ENNIS. 


Pen, who had read, and rather admired some ot her works 
(and expected to find in Miss Bunion a person somewhat resem- 
bling her own description of herself in the “ Passion-Flowers,” 
in which she stated that her youth resembled — 

“ A violet, shrinking meanly 

When blows the March wind keenly , 

A timid fawn, on wild-wood lawn, 

Where oak-boughs rustle greenly, — ” 

and that her maturer beauty was something very different, 
certainly, to the artless loveliness of her prime, but still exceed- 
ingly captivating and striking), beheld, rather to his surprise 
and amusement, a large and bony woman in a crumpled satin 
dress, who came creaking into the room with a step as heavy 
as a grenadier’s. Wagg instantly noted the straw which she 
brought in at the rumpled skirt of her dress, and would have 
stooped to pick it up, but Miss Bunion disarmed all criticism 
by observing this ornament herself, and putting down her own 
large foot upon it, so as to separate it from her robe, she stopped 
and picked up the straw, saying to Mrs. Bungay, that she was 
very sorry to be a little late, but that the omnibus was very 
slow, and what a comfort it was to get a ride all the way from 
Brompton for sixpence. Nobody laughed at the poetess’s speech, 
it was uttered so simply. Indeed, the worthy woman had not 
the least notion of being ashamed of an action incidental upon 
her poverty. 

“ Is that ‘ Passion-Flowers ? ’ ” Pen said to Wenham, by 
whom he was standing. “ Why, her picture in the volume 
represents her as a very well-looking young woman.” 

“You know passion-flowers, like all others, will run to 
seed,” Wenham said ; “ Miss Bunion’s portrait was probably 
painted some years ago.” 

“Well, I like her for not being ashamed of her poverty.” 

“ So do I,” said Mr. Wenham, who would have starved 
rather than have come to dinner in an omnibus ; “ but I don’t 
think that she need flourish the straw about, do you, Mr.' Pen- 
dennis ? My dear Miss Bunion, how do you do ? I was in a 
great lady’s drawing-room this morning, and everybody was 
charmed with your new volume. Those lines on the christen- 
ing of Lady Fanny Fantail brought tears into the Duchess’s 
eyes. I said that I thought I should have the pleasure of 
meeting you to-day, and she begged me to thank you, and say 
how greatly she was pleased.” 

This history, told in a bland, smiling manner, of a Duchess 
whom Wenham had met that very morning, too, quite put poor 


PENDENNIS. 


35 * 


Wagg’s dowager and baronet out of court, and placed Wenham 
beyond Wagg as a man of fashion. Wenham kept this in- 
estimable advantage, and having the conversation to himself, 
ran on with a number of anecdotes regarding the aristocracy. 
He tried to bring Mr. Popjoy into the conversation by making 
appeals to him, and saying, “I was telling your father thii 
morning,” or, “ I think you were present at W. house the othei 
night when the Duke said so and so,” but Mr. Popjoy would 
not gratify him by joining in the talk, preferring to fall back 
into the window recess with Mrs. Bungay, and watch the cabs 
that drove up to the opposite door. At least, if he would not 
talk, the hostess hoped that those odious Bacons would see 
how she had secured the noble Percy Popjoy for her party. 

And now the bell of Saint Paul’s tolled half an hour later 
than that for which Mr. Bungay had invited his party, and it 
was complete with the exception of two guests, who at last 
made their appearance, and in whom Pen was pleased to re- 
cognize Captain and Mrs. Shandon. 

When these two had made their greetings to the master and 
mistress of the house, and exchanged nods of more or less 
recognition with most of the people present, Pen and Warring- 
ton went up and shook hands very warmly with Mrs. Shandon, 
who, perhaps, was affected to. meet them, and think where it 
was she had seen them but a few days before. Shandon was 
brushed up, and looked pretty smart, in a red velvet waistcoat, 
and a frill, into which his wife had stuck her best brooch. In 
spite of Mrs. Bungay’s kindness, perhaps in consequence of 
it, Mrs. Shandon felt great terror and timidity in approaching 
her ; indeed, she was more awful than ever in her red satin 
and bird of Paradise, and it was not until she had asked in her 
great voice about the dear little girl, that the latter was some- 
what encouraged, and ventured to speak. 

“ Nice-looking woman,” Popjoy whispered to Warrington. 

Do introduce me to Captain Shandon, Warrington. I’m told 
he’s a tremendous clever fellow ; and, dammy, I adore intellect, 
by Jove I do!” This was the truth: Heaven had not en- 
dowed young Mr. Popjoy with much intellect oT his own, but 
had given him a generous faculty for admiring, if not for ap- 
preciating, the intellect of others. “ And introduce me to Miss 
Bunion. I’m told she’s very clever too. She’s rum to look at, 
certainly, but that don’t matter. Dammy, I consider myself a 
literary man, and I wish to know all the clever fellows.” So 
Mr. Popjoy and Mr. Shandon had the pleasure of becoming 
acquainted with one another ; and now the doors of the adjoin 


352 


PENDENNIS. 


ing dining-room being flung open, the party entered and took 
their seats at table. Pen found himself next to Miss Bunion 
on one side, and to Mr. Wagg — the truth is, Wagg fled alarmed 
from the vacant place by the poetess, and Pen was compelled 
to take it. 

The gifted being did not talk much during dinner, but Pen 
remarked that she ate, with a vast appetite, and never refused 
any of the supplies of wine which were offered to her by the 
butler. Indeed, Miss Bunion having considered Mr. Penden- 
nis for a minute, who gave himself rather grand airs, and who 
was attired in an extremely fashionable style, with his very 
best chains, shirt studs, and cambric fronts, he was set down 
and not without reason, as a prig by the poetess ; who thought 
it was much better to attend to her dinner than to take any 
notice of him. She told him as much in after days with her 
usual candor. “ I took you for one of the little May Fair dan- 
dies,” she said to Pen. “You looked as solemn as a little 
undertaker ; and as I disliked, beyond measure, the odious 
creature who was on the other side of me, I thought it was best 
to eat my dinner and hold my tongue.” 

“ And you did both very well, my dear Miss Bunion,” Pen 
said with a laugh. 

“ Well, so I do, but I intend to talk to you the next time a 
great deal : for you are neither so solemn, nor stupid, nor so 
pert as you look.” 

“Ah, Miss Bunion, how I pine for that ‘ next time ’ to come,” 
Pen said, with an air of comical gallantry : — But we must re- 
turn to the day, and the dinner at Paternoster Row. 

The repast was of the richest description — “ What I call of 
the florid Gothic style,” Wagg whispered to Pen, who sat be- 
side the humorist, in his side-wing voice. The men in creaking 
shoes and Berlin gloves were numerous and solemn, carrying 
on rapid conversations behind the guests, as they moved to and 
fro with the dishes. Doolan called out, “Waither,” to one of 
them, and blushed when he thought of his blunder. Mrs. Bun- 
gay’s own footboy was lost amidst those large and black-coated 
attendants. 

“ Look at that very bow-windowed man,” Wagg said. 
“ He’s an undertaker in Amen Corner, and attends funerals 
and dinners. Cold meat and hot, don’t you perceive ? He’s the 
sham butler here, and I observe, my dear Mr. Pendennis, as 
you will through life, that wherever there is a sham butler at a 
London dinner there is sham wine — this sherry is filthy. Bun- 
gay, my boy, where did you get this delicious brown sherry ? ” 




PENDENNIS. 


353 


“I’m glad you like it, Mr. Wagg ; glass with you,” said the 
publisher. “ It’s some I got from Alderman Benning’s store, 
and gave a good figure for it, I can tell you. Mr. Pendennis, 
will you join us ? Your ’ealth, gentlemen.” 

“ The old rogue, where does he expect to go to ? It came 
from the public-house,” Wagg said. “ It requires two men to 
carry off that sherry, ’tis so uncommonly strong. I wish I had 
a bottle of old Steyne’s wine here, Pendennis : your uncle and 
I have had many a one. He sends it about to people where 
he is in the habit of dining. I remember at poor Rawdon 
Crawley’s brother — he was Governor of Coventry Island — 
Steyne’s chef always came in the morning, and the butler ar- 
rived with the champagne from Gaunt BLouse, in the ice-pails 
ready.” 

“ How good this is ! ” said Popjoy, good-naturedly. “ You 
must have a cordon bleu in your kitchen.” 

“ O yes,” Mrs. Bungay said, thinking he spoke of a jack- 
chain very likely. 

“ I mean a French chef,” said the polite guest. 

“ O yes, your lordship,” again said the lady. 

“ Does yoiir artist say he’s a Frenchman, Mrs. B. ? ” called 
out Wagg. 

“Well, I’m sure I don’t know,” answered the publisher’s 
lady. 

“ Because, if he does, he’s a quizzin yer” cried Mr. Wagg ; 
but nobody saw the pun, which disconcerted somewhat the 
bashful punster. “ The dinner is from Griggs’ in St. Paul’s 
Churchyard ; so is Bacon’s,” he whispered Pen. “ Bungay 
writes to give half-a-crown a head more than Bacon, — so does 
Bacon. They would poison each other’s ices if they could get 
near them ; and as for the made-dishes — they are poison. This 
— hum — ha — this JJrimb orion a la Scvigne is delicious, Mrs. B.,” 
he said, helping himself to a dish which the undertaker handed 
to him. 

“ Well, I’m glad you like it,” Mrs. Bungay answered, blush- 
ing,' and not knowing whether the name of the dish was 
actually that which Wagg gave to it, but dimly conscious that 
that individual was quizzing her. Accordingly she hated Mr. 
Wagg with female ardor ; and would have deposed him from 
his command over Mr. Bungay’s periodical, but that his name 
was great in the trade, and his reputation in the land consider- 
able. 

By the displacement of persons, Warrington had found him- 
self on the right hand of Mrs. Shandon, who sat in plain black 

23 


354 


PENDENNIS. 


silk and faded ornaments by the side of the florid publisher. 
The sad smile of the lady moved his rough heart to pity. 
Nobody seemed to interest himself about her : she sat looking 
at her husband, who himself seemed rather abashed in the pres- 
ence of some of the company. Wenham and Wagg both 
knew him and his circumstances. He had worked with the 
latter, and was immeasurably his superior in wit, genius, and 
acquirement ; but Wagg’s star was brilliant in the world, and 
poor Shandon was unknown there. He could not speak before 
the noisy talk of the coarser and more successful man ; but 
drank his wine in silence, and as much of it as the people 
would give him. He was under surveillance . Bungay had 
warned the undertaker not to fill the Captain’s glass too 
often or too full. It was a melancholy precaution that, and 
the more melancholy that it was necessary. Mrs. Shandon, 
too, cast alarmed glances across the table to see that her hus- 
band did not exceed. 

Abashed by the failure of his first pun, for he was impudent 
and easily disconcerted, Wagg kept his conversation pretty 
much to Pen during the rest of dinner, and of course chiefly 
spoke about their neighbors. “ This is one of Bungay’s grand 
field-days,” he said. “ We are all Bungavians here. — Did you 
read Popjoy’s novel ? It was an old magazine story written by 
poor Buzzard years ago, and forgotten here until Mr. Trotter 
(that is Trotter with the large shirt-collar) fished it out and be- 
thought him that it was applicable to the late elopement : so 
Bob wrote a few chapters apropos — Popjoy permitted the use 
of his name, and I dare say supplied a page here and there — 
and ‘ Desperation, or the Fugitive Duchess ’ made its appear- 
ance. The great fun is to examine Popjoy about his own work, 
of which he doesn’t know a word. — I say, Popjoy, what a capital 
passage that is in Volume three, — where the Cardinal in dis- 
guise, after being converted by the Bishop of London, proposes 
marriage to the Duchess’s daughter.” 

“ Glad you like it,” Popjoy answered : “ it’s a favorite bit 
of my own.” 

“There’s no such thing in the whole book,” whispered 
Wagg to Pen. “ Invented it myself. Gad ! it wouldn’t be a 
bad plot for a high-church novel.” 

“I remember poor Byron, Hobhouse, Trelawny, and myself, 
dining with Cardinal Mezzocaldo, at Rome,” Captain Sumph 
began, “ and we had some Orvieto wine for dinner, which 
Byron liked very much. And I remember how the Cardinal 
regretted that he was a single man. We went to Civita Vecchia 


PEND ENNIS. 


355 


two days afterwards, where Byron’s yacht was — and, by Jove, 
the Cardinal died within three weeks ; and Byron was very 
sorry, for he rather liked him.” 

“ A devilish interesting story, Sumph, indeed,” Wagg said. 

“You should publish some of those stories, Captain Sumph, 
you really should. Such a volume would make our friend 
Bungay’s fortune,” Shandon said. 

“ Why don’t you ask Sumph to publish ’em in your new 
paper — the what-dye-call’em — hay, Shandon,” bawled out Wagg. 

“ Why don’t you ask him to publish ’em in your old maga- 
zine, the Thingumbob ? ” Shandon replied. 

“ Is there going to be a new paper ? ” asked Wenham, who 
knew perfectly well ; but was ashamed of his connection with 
the press. 

“ Bungay going to bring out a paper ? ” cried Popjoy, who, 
on the contrary, was proud of his literary reputation and ac- 
quaintances’ “You must employ me. Mrs. Bungay, use your 
influence with him, and make him employ me. Prose or verse 
— what shall it be ? Novels, poems, travels, or leading articles, 
begad. Anything or everything — only let Bungay pay me, and 
I’m ready — I am now, my dear Mrs. Bungay, begad now.” 

“ It’s to be called the ‘ Small Beer Chronicle,” growled 
Wagg, “and little Popjoy is to be engaged for the infantine 
department.” 

“ It is to be called the ‘ Pall Mall Gazette,’"- sir, and we 
shall be very happy to have you with us,” Shandon said, 

“ 1 Pall Mall Gazette ’ — why ‘ Pall Mall Gazette ? ” asked 
Wagg. 

“ Because the editor was born at Dublin, the sub-editor at 
Cork, because the proprietor lives in Paternoster Row, and the 
paper is published" in Catherine Street, Strand. Won’t that 
reason suffice you, Wagg ? ” Shandon said ; he was getting 
rather angry. “ Everything must have a name. My dog 
Ponto has a name. You’ve got a name, a name which you 
deserve, more or less, bedad. Why d’ye grudge the name to 
our paper ? ” 

“ By any other name it would smell as sweet,” said Wagg. 

“ I’ll have ye remember its’ name’s not whatdyecallem, 
Mr. Wagg,” said Shandon. “ You know its name well enough, 
and — ancl you know mine.” 

“And I know your address, too,” said Wagg, but this was 
spoken in an undertone, and the good-natured Irishman was 
appeased almost in an instant after his ebullition of spleen, and 
asked Wagg to drink wine with him in a friendly voice. 


35 6 


PENDENNIS. 


When the ladies retired from the table, the talk grew louder 
still ; and presently Wenham, in a courtly speech, proposed 
that everybody should drink to the health of the new Journal, 
eulogizing highly the talents, wit, and learning, of its editor, 
Captain Shandon. It was his maxim never to lose the support 
of a newspaper man, and in the course of that evening, he went 
round and saluted every literary gentleman present with a 
privy compliment specially addressed to him ; informing this 
one how great an impression had been made in Downing Street 
by his last article, and telling that one how profoundly his good 
friend, the Duke of So and So, had been struck by the ability 
of the late members. 

The evening came to a close, and in spite of all the precau- 
tions to the contrary, poor Shandon reeled in his walk, and went 
home to his new lodgings, with his faithful wife by his side, and 
the cabman on his box jeering at him. Wenham had a chariot 
of his own, which he put at Popjoy’s service ; and the timid 
Miss Bunion seeing Mr. Wagg, who was her neighbor, about to 
depart, insisted upon a seat in his carriage, much to that 
gentleman’s discomfiture. 

Pen and Warrington walked home together in the moon- 
light. “And now,” Warrington said, “that you have seen the 
men of letters, tell me, was I far wrong in saying that there are 
thousands of people in this town, who don’t write books, who 
are, to the full, as clever and intellectual as people who do ? ” 

Pen was forced to confess that the literary personages with 
whom he had become acquainted had not said much, in the 
course of the night’s conversation, that was worthy to be re- 
membered or quoted. In fact, not one word about literature 
had been said during the whole course of the night : — and it 
may be whispered to those uninitiated people who are anxious 
to know the habits and make the acquaintance of men of letters, 
that there are no race of people who talk about books, or, per- 
haps, who read books, so little as literary men. 


CHAPTER XXXV. 

THE “PALL MALL GAZETTE.” 

Considerable success at first attended the new journal. 
It was generally stated, that an influential political party sup- 
ported the paper ; and great names were cited amongst the 


PENDENNIS. 


357 


contributors to its columns. Was there any foundation for 
these rumors ? We are not at liberty to say whether they were 
well or ill founded ; but this much we may divulge, that an arti- 
cle upon foreign policy, which was generally attributed to a 
noble Lord, whose connection with the Foreign Office is very 
well known, was in reality composed by Captain Shandon, in 
the parlor of the Bear and Staff public-house near Whitehall 
Stairs, whither the printer’s boy had tracked him, and where a 
literary ally of his, Mr. Bludyer, had a temporary residence : 
and that a series of papers on finance questions, which were 
universally supposed to be written by a great Statesman of the 
House of Commons, were in reality composed by Mr. George 
Warrington of the Upper Temple. 

That there may have been some dealings between the “ Pall 
Mall Gazette ” and this influential party, is very possible. 
Percy Popjoy (whose father, Lord Falconet, was a member of 
the party) might be seen not unfreq-uently ascending the stairs 
to Warrington’s chambers ; and some information appeared in 
the paper which gave it a character, and could only be got from 
very peculiar sources. Several poems, feeble in thought, but 
loud and vigorous in expression, appeared in the “ Pall Mall 
Gazette,” with the signature of “ P. P.” ; and it must be owned 
that his novel was praised in the new journal in a very out- 
rageous manner. 

In the political department of the paper Mr. Pen did not 
take any share ; but he was a most active literary contributor. 
The “ Pall Mall Gazette ” had its offices, as we have heard, in 
Catherine Street, in the Strand, and hither Pen often came with 
his manuscripts in his pocket, and with a great deal of bustle 
and pleasure ; such as a man feels at the outset of his literary 
career, when to see himself in print is still a novel sensation, 
and he yet pleases himself to think that his writings are crea- 
ting some noise in the world. 

Here it was that Mr. Jack Finucane, the sub-editor, com- 
piled with paste and scissors the journal of which he was super- 
visor. With an eagle eye he scanned all the paragraphs of all 
the newspapers which had anything to do with the world of 
fashion over w'hich he presided. He didn’t let a death or a 
dinner-party of the aristocracy pass without having the event 
recorded in the columns of his journal ; and from the most re- 
condite provincial prints, and distant Scotch and Irish news- 
papers, he fished out astonishing paragraphs and intelligence 
regarding the upper classes of society. It was a grand, nay, a 
touching sight, for a philosopher, to see Jack Finucane, Esquire, 


PENDENNIS. 


35 8 

with a plate of meat from the cookshop, and a glass of porter 
from the public-house, for his meal, recounting the feasts of the 
great, as if he had been present at them ; and in tattered trou- 
sers and dingy shirt sleeves, cheerfully describing and arranging 
the most brilliant fetes of the world of fashion. The incongruity 
of Finucane’s avocation, and his manners and appearance, 
amused his new friend Pen. Since he left his own native village, 
where his rank probably was not very lofty, Jack had seldom 
seen any society but such as used the parlor of the taverns 
which he frequented, whereas from his writing you would have 
supposed that he dined with ambassadors, and that his common 
lounge was the bow-window of White’s. Errors of description, 
it is true, occasionally slipped from his pen ; but the “ Ballina- 
fad Sentinel,” of which he was own correspondent, suffered by 
these, not the “ Pall Mall Gazette,” in which Jack was not per- 
mitted to write much, his London chiefs thinking that the 
scissors and the paste were better wielded by him than the pen. 

Pen took a great deal of pains with the writing of his reviews, 
and having a pretty fair share of desultory reading, acquired in 
the early years of his life, an eager fancy and a keen sense of 
fun, his articles pleased his chief and the public, and he was 
proud to think that he deserved the money which he earned. 
We may be sure that the “ Pall Mall Gazette ” was taken in 
regularly at Fairoaks, and read with delight by two ladies there. 
It was received at Clavering Park, too, where we know there 
was a young lady of great literary tastes ; and old Doctor Port- 
man himself, to whom the widow sent her paper after she had 
got her son’s articles by heart, signified his approval of Pen’s 
productions, saying that the lad had spirit, taste, and fancy, and 
wrote, if not like a scholar, at any rate like a gentleman. 

And what was the astonishment and delight of our friend 
Major Pendennis, on walking into one of his clubs, the Regent, 
where Wenham, Lord Falconet, and some other gentlemen of 
good reputation and fashion were assembled, to hear them one 
day talking over a number of the “ Pall Mall Gazette,” and of 
an article which appeared in its columns, making some bitter 
fun of a book recently published by the wife of a celebrated 
member of the opposition party. The book in question was a 
Book of Travels in Spain and Italy, by the Countess of Muff- 
borough, in which it was difficult to "say which was the most 
wonderful, the French or the English, in which languages her 
ladyship wrote indifferently, and upon the blunders of which 
the critic pounced with delighted mischief. The critic was no 
other than Pen : he jumped and danced round about his subject 


PEND ENNIS. 


359 

with the greatest jocularity and high spirits : he showed up the 
noble lady’s fault with admirable mock gravity and decorum. 
There was not a word in the article which was not polite and 
gentleman-like ; and the unfortunate subject of the criticism 
was scarified and laughed at during the operation. Wenham’s 
bilious countenance was puckered up with malign pleasure as 
he read the critique. Lady Muffborough had not asked him to 
her parties during the last year. Lord Falconet giggled and 
laughed with all his heart ; Lord Muffborough and he had been 
rivals ever since they began life ; and these complimented 
Major Pendennis, who until now had scarcely paid any attention 
to some hints which his Fairoaks correspondence threw out of 
44 dear Arthur’s constant and severe literary occupations, which 
I fear may undermine the poor boy’s health,” and had thought 
any notice of Mr. Pen and his newspaper connections quite be- 
low his dignity as a Major and a gendeman. 

But when the oracular Wenham . praised the boy's produc- 
tion ; when Lord Falconet, who had had the news from Percy 
Popjoy, approved of the genius of young Pen ; when the great 
Lord Steyne himself, to whom the Major referred the article, 
laughed and sniggered over it, swore it was capital, and that 
the Muffborough would writhe under it, like a whale under a 
harpoon, the Major, as in duty bound, began to admire his 
nephew very much, said, “ By gad, the young rascal had some 
stuff in him, and would do something ; he had always said he 
would do something ; ” and with a hand quite tremulous with 
pleasure, the old gentleman sat down to write to the widow at 
Fairoaks all that the great folks had said in praise of Pen ; and 
he wrote to the young rascal, too, asking when he w ould come 
and eat a chop with his old uncle, and saying that he was com- 
missioned to take him to dinner at Gaunt House, for Lord 
Steyne liked anybody who could entertain him. whether by his 
folly, wit, or by his dulness, by his oddity, affectation, good 
spirits, or any other quality. Pen flung his letter across the 
table to Warrington ; perhaps he was disappointed that the 
other did not seem' to be much affected by it. 

The courage of young critics is prodigious : they clamber 
up to the judgment seat, and, with scarce a hesitation, give 
their opinion upon w^tj;s the most intricate or profound. Had 
Macaulay’s His ton* y/Herschel's Astronomy been put before 
Pen at this period, he would have looked through the volumes, 
meditated his opinion over a cigar, and signified his august 
approval of either author, as if the critic had been their bom 
superior and indulgent master and patron. By the help of the 


PENDENNIS. 


360 

Biographie Universelle or the British Museum, he would be able 
to take a rapid resume of a historical period, and allude to 
names, dates, and facts, in such a masterly, easy way, as to 
astonish his mamma at home, who wondered where her boy 
could have acquired such a prodigious store of reading, and 
himself, too, when he came to read over his articles two or 
three months after they had been composed, and when he had 
forgotten the subject and the books which he had consulted. 
At that period of his life Mr. Pen owns, that he would not have 
hesitated, at twenty-four hours’ notice, to pass an opinion upon 
the greatest scholars, or to give a judgment upon the Encyclo- 
paedia. Luckily he had Warrington to laugh at him and to 
keep down his impertinence by a constant and wholesome 
ridicule, or he might have become conceited beyond all suffer- 
ance ; for Shandon liked the dash and flippancy of his young 
aide-de-camp , and was, indeed, better pleased with Pen’s light 
and brilliant flashes, than with the heavier metal which his elder 
coadjutor brought to bear. 

But though he might justly be blamed on the score of 
impertinence and a certain prematurity of judgment, Mr. Pen 
was a perfectly honest critic ; a great deal too candid for Mr. 
Bungay’s purposes, indeed, who grumbled sadly at his impar- 
tiality. Pen and his chief, the Captain, had a dispute upon this 
subject one day. “ In the name of common sense, Mr. Pen- 
dennis,” Shandon asked, “ what have you been doing — praising 
one of Mr. Bacon’s books ? Bungay has been with me in a fury 
this morning, at seeing a laudatory article upon one of the 
works of the odious firm over the way.” 

Pen’s eyes opened with wide astonishment. “ Do you mean 
to say,” he asked, “ that we are to praise no books that Bacon 
publishes : or that, if the books are good, we are to say they 
are bad ? 

“ My good young friend — for what do you suppose a benev- 
olent publisher undertakes a critical journal, to benefit his 
rival ? ” Shandon inquired. 

“ To benefit himself certainly, but to tell the truth too,” Pen 
said — “ ruat coelum, to tell the truth.” 

“ And my prospectus,” said Shandon, with a laugh and a 
sneer ; “ do you consider that was a work of mathematical 
accuracy of statement ? ” 

“ Pardon me, that is not the question,” Pen said ; “ and I 
don’t think you very much care to argue it. I had some qualms 
of conscience about that same prospectus, and debated the mat- 
ter with my friend Warrington. We agreed, however,” Pen 


PENDENNIS. 


361 

said, laughing, “ that because the prospectus was rather declam' 
atory and poetical, and the giant was painted upon the show- 
board rather larger than the original, who was inside the cara- 
van, we need not be too scrupulous about this trifling inaccuracy, 
but might do our part of the show, without loss of character or 
remorse of conscience. We are the fiddlers, and play our tunes 
only ; you are the showman.” 

“ And leader of the van,” said Shandon. “ Well, I am glad 
that your conscience gave you leave to play for us.” 

“ Yes, but,” said Pen, with a fine sense of the dignity of his 
position, “ we are all party men in England, and I will stick to 
my party like a Briton. I will be as good-natured as you like 
to our own side, he is a fool who quarrels with his own nest ; 
and I will hit the enemy as hard as you like — but with fair play, 
Captain, if you please. One can’t tell all the truth, I suppose ; 
but one can tell nothing but the truth : and I would rather 
starve, by Jove, and never earn another penny by my pen” (this 
redoubted instrument had now been in use for some six weeks, 
and Pen spoke of it with vast enthusiasm and respect) “ than 
strike an opponent an unfair blow, or, if called upon to place 
him, rank him below his honest desert.” 

“ Well, Mr. Pendennis, when we want Bacon smashed, we 
must get some other hammer to do it,” Shandon said, with fatal 
good-nature ; and very likely thought within himself, “ A few 
years hence perhaps the young gentleman won’t be so squeam- 
ish.” The veteran Condottiere himself was no longer so 
scrupulous. He had fought and killed on so many a side for 
many a year past, that remorse had long left him. “ Gad,” said 
he, “you’ve a tender conscience, Mr. Pendennis. It’s the 
luxury of all novices, and I may have had one once myself ; but 
that sort of bloom wears off with the rubbing of the world, and 
I’m not going to the trouble myself of putting on an artificial 
complexion, like our pious friend Wenham, or our model of 
virtue, Wagg.” 

“ I don’t know whether some people’s hypocrisy is not bet v 
ter, Captain, than others’ cynicism.” 

“ It’s more profitable, at any rate,” said the Captain, biting 
his nails. “ That Wenham is as dull a quack as ever quacked : 
and you see the carriage in which he drove to dinner. ’Faith, 
it’ll be a long time before Mrs. Shandon will take a drive in her 
own chariot. God help her, poor thing ! ” And Pen went 
away from his chief, after their little dispute and colloquy, 
pointing his own moral to the Captain’s tale, and thinking to 
himself, “ Behold this man, stored with genius, wit, learning, 


PENDENN1S. 


362 

and a hundred good natural gifts : see how he has wrecked 
them, by paltering with his honesty, and forgetting to respect 
himself. Wilt thou remember thyself, O Pen ? thou art con- 
ceited enough ! Wilt thou sell thy honor for a bottle ? No, by 
heaven’s grace, we will be honest, whatever befalls, and our 
mouths shall only speak the truth when they open.” 

A punishment, or, at least, a trial, was in store for Mr. Pen. 
In the very next number of the Pall Mall Gazette , Warrington 
read out, with roars of laughter, an article which by no means 
amused Arthur Pendennis, who was himself at work with a 
criticism for the next week’s number of the same journal ; and 
in which the “ Spring Annual ” was ferociously maltreated by 
some unknown writer. The person of all most cruelly mauled 
was Pen himself. His verses had not appeared with his own 
name in the “ Spring Annual,” but under an assumed signature. 
As he had refused to review the book, Shandon had handed it 
over to Mr. Bludyer, with directions to that author to dispose 
of it. And he had done so effectually. Mr. Bludyer, who was 
a man of very considerable talent, and of a race which, I believe, 
is quite extinct in the press of our time, had a certain notoriety 
in his profession, and reputation for savage humor. He smashed 
and trampled down the poor spring flowers with no more mercy 
than a bull would have on a parterre ; and having cut up the 
volume to his heart’s content, went and sold it at a bookstall, 
and purchased a pint of brandy with the proceeds of the 
volume. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

WHERE PEN APPEARS IN TOWN AND COUNTRY. 

Let us be allowed to pass over a few months of the history 
<5 Mr. Arthur Pendennis’s lifetime, during the which, many 
events may have occurred which were more interesting and 
exciting to himself, than they would be likely to prove to the 
reader of his present memoirs. We left, him in the last chapter, 
regularly entered upon his business as a professional writer, or 
literary hack, as Mr. Warrington chooses to style himself and 
his friend ; and we know how the life of any hack, legal or 
literary, in a curacy, or in a marching regiment, or at a mer- 
chant’s desk, is full of routine, and tedious of description. One 


PEND ENNIS. 


363 

day’s labor resembles another much too closely. A literary 
man has often to work for his bread against time, or against his 
will, or in spite of his health, or of his indolence, or of his 
repugnance to the subject on which he is called to exert him- 
self, just like any other daily toiler. When you want to make 
money by Pegasus (as he must, perhaps, who has no other 
saleable property), farewell poetry and aerial flights : Pegasus 
only rises now like Mr. Green’s balloon, at periods advertised 
beforehand, and when the spectator’s money has been paid. 
Pegasus trots in harness, over the stony pavement, and pulls a 
cart or a cab behind him. Often Pegasus does his work with 
panting sides and trembling knees, and not seldom gets a cut 
of the whip from his driver. 

Do not let us, however, be too prodigal of our pity upon 
Pegasus. There is no reason why this animal should be 
exempt from labor, or illness, or decay, any more than any of 
the other creatures of God’s world. If he gets the whip, 
Pegasus very often deserves it, and I for one am quite ready to 
protest with my friend, George Warrington, against the doctrine 
which some poetical sympathizers are inclined to put forward, 
viz., that men of letters, and what is called genius, are to be 
exempt from the prose duties of this daily, bread-wanting, tax- 
paying life, and are not to be made to work and pay like their 
neighbors. 

Well then, the “ Pall Mall Gazette ” being duly established, 
and Arthur Pendennis’s merits recognized as a flippant, witty, 
and amusing critic, he worked away hard every week, preparing 
reviews of such works as came into his department, and writing 
his reviews with flippancy certainly, but with honesty, and to 
the best of his power. It might be that a historian of three- 
score, who had spent a quarter of a century in composing a 
work of which our young gentleman disposed in the course of a 
couple of days’ reading at the British Museum, was not 
altogether fairly treated by such a facile critic ; or that a poet, 
who had been elaborating sublime sonnets and odes until he 
thought them fit for the public and for fame, was annoyed 
by two or three dozen pert lines in Mr. Pen’s review, in which 
the poet’s claims were settled by the critic, as if the latter 
were my lord on the bench, and the author a miserable little 
suitor trembling before him. The actors at the theatres 
complained of him wofully, too, and very likely he was too hard 
upon them. But there was not much harm done after all. It 
is different now, as we know ; but there were so few great 
historians, or great poets, or great actors, in Pen’s time, that 


PENDENNIS . 


364 

scarce any at all came up for judgment before his critical desk. 
Those who got a little whipping, got what in the main was good 
for them ; not that the judge was any better or wiser than the 
persons whom he sentenced, or indeed ever fancied himself so. 
Pen had a strong sense of humor and justice, and had not 
therefore an overweening respect for his own works ; besides, 
he had his friend Warrington at his elbow — a terrible critic if 
the young man was disposed to be conceited, and more savage 
over Pen than ever he was to those whom he tried at his literary 
assize. 

By these critical labors, and by occasional contributions to 
leading articles of the journal, when, without wounding his 
paper, this eminent publicist could conscientiously speak his 
mind, Mr. Arthur Pendennis gained the sum of four pounds 
four shillings weekly, and with no small pains and labor. Like- 
wise he furnished Magazines and Reviews with articles of his 
composition, and is believed to have been (though on this score 
he never chooses to speak) London correspondent of the Chat- 
teris Champion, which at that time contained some very brilliant 
and eloquent letters from the metropolis. By these labors the 
fortunate youth was enabled to earn a sum very nearly equal to 
four hundred pounds a year ; and on the second Christmas after 
his arrival in London, he actually brought a hundred pounds to 
his mother, as a dividend upon the debt which he owed to 
Laura. That Mrs. Pendennis read every word of her son’s 
works, and considered him to be the profoundest thinker and 
most elegant writer of the day ; that she thought his retribution 
of the hundred pounds an act of angelic virtue ; that she feared 
he was ruining his health by his labors, and was delighted when 
he told her of the society which he met, and of the great men of 
letters and fashion whom he saw, will be imagined by all readers 
who have seen son-worship amongst mothers, and that charming 
simplicity of love with which women in the country watch the 
career of their darlings in London. If John has held such and 
such a brief ; if Tom has been invited to such and such a ball ; 
or George has met this or that great and famous man at dinner ; 
what a delight there is in the hearts of mothers and sisters at 
home in Somersetshire ! How young Hopeful’s letters are read 
and remembered ! What a theme for village talk they give, 
and friendly congratulation ! In the second winter, Pen came 
for a very brief space, and cheered the widow’s heart, and light- 
ened up the lonely house at Fairoaks. Helen had her son all 
to herself ; Laura was away on a visit to old Lady Rockminster ; 
the folks of Clavering Park were absent ; the very few old friends 


PENDENNIS. 


36s 

of the house, Doctor Portman at their head, called upon Mr. 
Pen, and treated him with marked respect ; between mother 
and son, it was all fondness, confidence, and affection. It was 
the happiest fortnight of the widow’s whole life ; perhaps in the 
lives of both of them. The holiday was gone only too quickly ; 
and Pen was back in the busy world, and the gentle widow alone 
again. She sent Arthur’s money to Laura. I don’t know why 
this young lady took the opportunity of leaving home when Pen 
was coming thither, or whether he was the more piqued or re- 
lieved by her absence. 

He was by this time, by his own merits and his uncle’s 
introductions, pretty well introduced into London, and known 
both in literary and polite circles. Amongst the former his 
fashionable reputation stood him in no little stead ; he was 
considered to be a gentleman of good present means and 
better expectations, who wrote for his pleasure, than which 
there cannot be a greater recommendation to a young literary 
aspirant. Bacon, Bungay, and Co., were proud to accept his 
articles ; Mr. Wenham asked him to dinner ; Mr. Wagg looked 
upon him with a favorable eye ; and they reported how they met 
him at the houses of persons of fashion, amongst whom he was 
pretty welcome, as they did not trouble themselves about his 
means, present or future ; as his appearance and address were 
good ; and as he had got a character for being a clever fellow. 
Finally, he was asked to one house, because he was seen at 
another house : and thus no small varieties of London life 
were presented to the young man : he was made familiar with 
all sorts of people from Paternoster Row to Pimlico, and was as 
much at home at May Fair dining-tables as at those tavern boards 
where some of his companions of the pen were accustomed to 
assemble. 

Full of high spirits and curiosity, easily adapting himself in 
all whom he met, the young fellow pleased himself in this 
strange variety and jumble of men, and made himself welcome, 
or at ease at least, wherever he went. He would breakfast, for 
instance, at Mr. Plover’s of-a morning, in company with a Peer, 
a Bishop, a parliamentary orator, two blue ladies of fashion, a 
' popular preacher, the author of the last new novel, and the very 
latest lion imported from Egypt or from America ; and would 
quit this distinguished society for the back room at the news- 
paper office, where pens and ink and the wet proof sheets were 
awaiting him. Here would be Finucane, the sub-editor, with 
the last news from the Row : and Shandon would come in 
presently, and giving a nod to Pen, would begin scribbling his 


PENDENN/S . 


366 

leading article at the other end of the table, flanked by the 
pint of sherry, which, when the attendant boy beheld him, was 
always silently brought for the Captain : or Mr. Bludyer’s roar- 
ing voice would be heard in the front room, where that truculent 
critic would impound the books on the counter in spite of the 
timid remonstrances of Mr. Midge, the publisher, and after 
looking through the volumes would sell them at his accustomed 
book-stall, and having drunken and dined upon the produce of 
the sale in a tavern box, would call for ink and paper, and pro' 
ceed to “ smash ” the author of his dinner and the novel. 
Towards evening Mr. Pen would stroll in the direction of his 
club, and take up Warrington there for a constitutional walk. 
This exercise freed the lungs, and gave an appetite for dinner, 
after which Pen had the privilege to make his bow at some very 
pleasant houses which were opened to him ; or the town before 
him for amusement. There was the Opera ; or the Eagle Tavern ; 
or a ball to go to in May Fair; or a quiet night with a cigar 
and a book and a long talk with Warrington ; or a wonderful 
new song at the Back Kitchen ; — at this time of his life Mr. 
Pen beheld all sorts of places and men ; and very likely did not 
know how much he enjoyed himself until long after, when balls 
gave him no pleasure, neither did farces make him laugh ; nor 
did the tavern joke produce the least excitement in him ; nor 
did the loveliest dancer that ever showed her ankles cause him 
to stir from his chair after dinner. At his present mature age 
all these pleasures are over : and the times have passed away 
too. It is but a very very few years since — but the time is gone, 
and most of the men. Bludyer will no more bully authors or 
cheat landlords of their score. Shandon, the learned and thrift- 
less, the witty and unwise, sleeps his last sleep. They buried 
honest Doolan the other day : never will he cringe or flatter, 
never pull long-bow or empty whiskey-noggin any more. 

The London season was now blooming in its full vigor, and 
the fashionable newspapers abounded with information regard- 
ing the grand banquets, routs, and balls which were enlivening 
the polite world. Our gracious Sovereign was holding levees 
and drawing-rooms at St. James’s : the bow-windows of the 
clubs were crowded with the heads of respectable red faced 
newspaper-reading gentlemen : along the Serpentine trailed 
thousands of carriages : squadrons of dandy horsemen tranfpled 
over Rotten Row : everybody was in town in a word ; and of 
course Major Arthur Pendennis, who was somebody, was not 
absent. 


PENDENNIS. 


367 

With his head tied up in a smart bandanna handkerchief, 
and his meagre carcass enveloped in a brilliant Turkish dressing- 
gown, the worthy gentleman sat on a certain morning by his 
fireside, letting his fee*t gently simmer in a bath, whilst he took 
his early cup of tea, and perused his “Morning Post.” He 
could not have faced the day without his two hours’ toilet, with- 
out his early cup of tea, without his “ Morning Post.” I sup- 
pose nobody in the world except Morgan, not even Morgan’s 
master himself, knew how feeble and ancient the Major was 
growing, and what numberless little comforts he required. 

If men sneer, as our habit is, at the artifices of an old beauty, 
at her paint, perfumes, ringlets ; at those innumerable, and to us 
unknown, stratagems with which she is said to remedy the 
ravages of time and reconstruct the charms whereof years have 
bereft her ; the ladies, it is to be presumed, are not on their 
side altogether ignorant that men are vain as well as they, and 
that the toilets of old bucks are to the full as elaborate as their 
own. How is it that old Blushington keeps that constant little 
rose-tint on his cheeks ; and where does old Blondel get the 
preparation which makes his silver hair pass for golden ? Have 
you ever seen Lord Hotspur get off his horse when he thinks 
nobody is looking ? Taken out of his stirrups, his shiny boots 
can hardly totter up the steps of Hotspur House. He is a 
dashing young nobleman still as you see the back of him in 
Rotten Row ; when you behold him on foot, what an old, old 
fellow ! Did you ever form to yourself any idea of Dick Lacy 
(Dick has been Dick these sixty years) in a natural state, and 
without his stays ? All these men are objects whom the ob- 
server of human life and manners may contemplate with as 
much profit as the most elderly Belgravian Venus, or inveterate 
May Fair Jezebel. An old reprobate daddy long-legs, who has 
never said his prayers (except perhaps in public) these fifty 
years : an old buck who still clings to as many of the habits of 
youth as his feeble grasp of health can hold by : who has given 
up the bottle, but sits with young fellows over it, and tells 
naughty stories upon toast and water — who has given up beauty, 
but still talks about it as wickedly as the youngest roue in 
company — such an old fellow, I say, if any person in Pimlico or 
St. James’s were to order the beadles to bring him into the 
middle aisle, and there set him in an arm-chair, and make a 
text of him, and preach about him to the congregation, could 
be turned to a wholesome use for once in his life, and might be 
surprised to find that some good thoughts came out of him. 
But, we are wandering from our text, the honest Major, who 


PEND ENNIS. 


368 

sits all this while with his feet cooling in the bath : Morgan 
takes them out of that place of purification, and dries them 
daintily, and proceeds to set the old gentleman on his legs, 
with waistband and wig, starched cravat, and spotless boots 
and gloves. 

It was during these hours of the toilet that Morgan and his 
employer had their confidential conversations, for they did not 
meet much at other times of the day — the Major abhorring the 
society of his own chairs and tables in his lodgings ; and Mor- 
gan, his master’s toilet over and letters delivered, had his time 
very much on his own hands. 

This spare time the active and well-mannered gentleman 
bestowed among the valets and butlers of the nobility, his ac- 
quaintance ; and Morgan Pendennis, as he was styled, for, by 
such compound names, gentlemen’s gentlemen are • called in 
their private circles, was a frequent and welcome guest at some 
of the very highest tables in this town. He was a member of 
two influential clubs in May Fair and Pimlico ; and he was thus 
enabled to know the whole gossip of the town, and entertain 
his master very agreeably during the two hours’ toilet conversa- 
tion. He knew a hundred tales and legends regarding persons 
of the very highest ton , whose valets canvass their august 
secrets, just, my dear madam, as our own parlor-maids and 
dependents in the kitchen discuss our characters, our stinginess 
and generosity, our pecuniary means or embarrassments, and 
our little domestic or connubial tiffs and quarrels. If I leave 
this manuscript open on my table, I have not the slightest 
doubt Betty will read it, and they will talk it over in the lower 
regions to-night ; and to-morrow she will bring in my break- 
fast with a face of such entire imperturbable innocence, that no 
mortal could suppose her guilty of playing the spy. If you and 
the Captain have high words upon any subject, which is just 
possible, the circumstances of the quarrel, and the characters of 
both of you, will be discussed with impartial eloquence over the 
kitchen tea-table ; and if Mrs. Smith’s maid should by chance be 
taking a dish of tea with yours, her presence will not undoubtedly 
act as a restraint upon the discussion in question ; her opinion 
will be given with candor ; and the next day her mistress will pro- 
bably know that Captain and Mrs. Jones have been a quarrel- 
ling as usual. Nothing is secret. Take it as a rule that John 
knows everything : and as in our humble world so in the 
greatest : a duke is no more a hero to his valet- de-ch a mbre than 
you or I ; and his Grace’s Man at his club, in company doubt- 
less with other Men of equal social rank, talks over his master’s 


PENDENNIS. 


369 

character and affairs with the ingenious truthfulness which 
befits gentlemen who are met together in confidence. Who is 
a niggard and screws up his money-boxes : who is in the hands 
of the money-lenders, and is putting his noble name on the 
back of bills of exchange : who is intimate with whose wife : 
who wants whom to marry her daughter, and which he won’t, 
no not at any price : — all these facts gentlemen’s confidential 
gentlemen discuss confidentially, and are known and examined 
by every person who has any claim to rank in genteel society. 
In a word, if old Pendennis himself was said to know every- 
thing, and was at once admirably scandalous and delightfully 
discreet ; it is but justice to Morgan to say, that a great deal of 
his master’s information was supplied to that worthy man by 
his valet, who went out and foraged knowlege for him. Indeed, 
what more effectual plan is there to get a knowledge of London 
society, than to begin at the foundation — that is, at the kitchen- 
floor ? 

So Mr. Morgan and his employer conversed as the latter’s 
toilet proceeded. There had been a drawing-room on the day 
previous, and the Major read among the presentations that of 
Lady Clavering by Lady Rockminster, and of Miss Amory by 
her mother Lady Clavering, — and in a further part of the paper 
their dresses were described, with a precision and in a jargon 
which will puzzle and amuse the antiquary of future generations. 
The sight of these names carried Pendennis back to the coun- 
try. “ How long have the Claverings been in London ? ” he 
asked ; “ pray, Morgan, have you seen any of their people ? ” 

“ Sir Francis have sent away his foring man, sir,” Mr. 
Morgan replied ; “ and have took a friend of mine as own man, 
sir. Indeed he applied on my reckmendation. You may 
recklect Towler, sir, — tall red-aired man — but dyes his air. 
Was groom of the chambers in Lord Levant’s family till his 
Lordship broke hup. It’s a fall for Towler, sir; but pore men 
can’t be particklar,” said the valet, with a pathetic voice. 

“ Devilish hard on Towler, by gad ! ” said the Major, 
amused, “ and not pleasant for Lord Levant — he, he ! ” 

“ Always knew it was coming, sir. I spoke to you of it 
Michaelmas was four years : when her Ladyship put the 
diamonds in pawn. It was Towler, sir, took ’em in two cabs 
to Dobree’s — and a good deal of the plate went the same way. 
Don’t you remember seeing of it at Blackwall, with the Levant 
arms and coronick, and Lord Levant settn oppsit to it at the 
Marquis of Steyne’s dinner ? Beg your pardon ; did I cut you, 
sir ? ” 


24 


37 ° 


PENDENNIS. 


Morgan was now operating upon the Major’s chin — he con- 
tinued the theme while strapping the skilful razor. “ They’ve 
took a house in Grosvenor Place, and are coming out strong, 
sir. Her ladyship’s going to give three parties, besides a 
dinner a week, sir. Her fortune won’t stand it — can’t stand it.” 

“ Gad, she had a devilish good cook when I was at Fair- 
oaks,” the Major said, with very little compassion for the widow 
Amory’s fortune. 

“ Marobblan was his name, sir Marobblan’s gone away, 
sir ; ” Morgan said, — and the Major, this time, with hearty 
sympathy, said, “he was devilish sorry to lose him.” 

“There’s been a tremenjuous row about that Mosseer 
Marobblan,” Morgan continued. “At a ball at Baymouth, sir, 
bless his impadence, he challenged Mr. Harthur to fight a 
jewel, sir, which Mr. Harthur was very near knocking him 
down, and pitchin’ him outawinder, and serve him right ; but 
Chevalier Strong, sir, came up and stopped the shindy — I beg 
pardon, the holtercation, sir — them French cooks has as much 
pride and hinsolence as if they was real gentlemen.” 

“ I heard something of that quarrel,” said the Major; “but 
Mirobolant was not turned off for that ? ” 

“No, sir — that affair, sir, which Mr. Harthur forgave it him 
and beaved most handsome, was hushed hup : it was about 
Miss Hamory, sir, that he ad is dismissial. Those French fel- 
lers, they fancy everybody is in love with ’em ; and he climbed 
up the large grape vine to her winder, sir, and was a trying to 
get in, when he was caught, sir ; and Mr. Strong came out, and 
they got the garden engine and played on him, and there was 
no end of a row, sir.” 

“ Confound his impudence ! You don’t mean to say Miss 
Amory encouraged him,” cried the Major, amazed at a peculiar 
expression in Mr. Morgan’s countenance. 

Morgan resumed his imperturable demeanor. “ Know 
nothing about it, sir. Servants don’t know them kind of things 
the least. Most probbly there was nothing in it — so many 
lies is told about families — Marobblan went away, bag and 
baggage, saucepans, and pianna, and all — the feller ad a pianna, 
and wrote potry in French, and he took a lodging at Claver- 
ing, and he hankered about the primises, and it was said that 
Madame Fribsby, the milliner, brought letters to Miss Hamory, 
though I don’t believe a word about it ; nor that he tried to 
pison hisself with charcoal, which it was all a humbug betwigst 
him and Madame Fribsby ; and he was nearly shot by the 
keeper in the park.” 


PENDEKN1S. 


37 1 


In the course of that very day, it chanced that the Major 
had stationed himself in the great window of Bays’s Club in St. 
James’s Street, at the hour in the afternoon when you see a 
half-score of respectable old bucks similarly recreating them- 
selves (Bays’s is rather an old-fashioned place of resort now, 
and many of its members more than middle-aged ; but in the 
time of the Prince Regent, these old fellows occupied the same 
window, and were some of the very greatest dandies in this 
empire) — Major Pendennis was looking from the great window, 
and spied his nephew Arthur walking down the street in 
company with his friend Mr. Popjoy. 

“ Look ! ” said Popjoy to Pen, as they passed, “ did you 
ever pass Bays’s at four o’clock, without seeing that collection 
of old fogies ? It’s a regular museum. They ought to be cast 
in wax, and set up at Madame Tussaud’s — ” 

“ — In a chamber of old horrors by themselves,” Pen said, 
laughing. 

“ — In the chamber of horrors ! Gad, dooced good ! ” Pop 
cried. “ They are old rogues, most of ’em, and no mistake. 
There’s old Blondel ; there’s my Uncle Colchicum, the most 
confounded old sinner in Europe; there’s — hullo! there’s 
somebody rapping the window and nodding at us.” 

“ It’s my uncle, the Major,” said Pen. “ Is he an old sinner 
too ? ” 

“ Notorious old rogue,” Pop said, wagging his head. 
(“ Notowious old woge,” he pronounced the words, thereby 
rendering them much more emphatic.) “ He’s beckoning you 
in ; he wants to speak to you.” 

“ Come in too,” Pen said. 

“ — Can’t,” replied the other. “Cut uncle Col. two years 
ago, about Mademoiselle Frangipane — Ta, ta,” and the young 
sinner took leave of Pen, and the club of the elder criminals, 
and sauntered into Blacquiere’s, an adjacent establishment, 
frequented by reprobates of his own age. 

Colchicum, Blondel, and the senior bucks had just been 
conversing about the Clavering family, whose appearance in 
London had formed the subject of Major Pendennis’s morning 
conversation with his valet. Mr. Blondel’s house was next to 
that of Sir Francis Clavering, in Grosvenor Place : giving very 
good dinners himself, he had remarked some activity in his 
neighbor’s kitchen. Sir Francis, indeed, had a new chef, who 
had come in more than once and dressed Mr. Blondel’s dinner 
for him ; that gentleman having only a remarkably expert 
female artist permanently engaged in his establishment, and 


37 2 


PEND ENNIS. 


employing such chefs of note as happened to be free on the 
occasion of his grand banquets. “ They go to a devilish ex- 
pense and see devilish bad company as yet, I hear, Mr. 
Blondel said, — they scour the streets, by gad, to get people to 
dine with ’em. Champignon says it breaks his heart to serve 
up a dinner to their society. What a shame it is that those 
low people should have money at all,” cried Mr. Blondel, whose 
grandfather had been a reputable leather-breeches maker, and 
whose father had lent money to the Princes. 

“ I wish I had fallen in with the widow myself,” sighed 
Lord Colchicum, “ and not been laid up with that confounded 
gout at Leghorn.— I would have married the woman myself. — 
I’m told she has six hundred thousand pounds in the Threes.” 

“ Not quite so much as that, — I knew her family in India,’' 
— Major Pendennis said. “ I knew her family in India ; her 
father was an enormously rich old indigo planter, — know all 
about her, — Clavering has the next estate to ours in the country. 
— Ha ! there’s my nephew walking with ” — “ With mine, — the 
infernal young scamp,” said Lord Colchicum, glowering at 
Popjoy out of his heavy eyebrows ; and he turned away from 
the window as Major Pendennis tapped upon it. 

The Major was in high good-humor. The sun was bright, 
the air brisk and invigorating. He had determined upon a 
visit to Lady Clavering on that day, and bethought him that 
Arthur would be a good companion for a walk across the Green 
Park to her ladyship’s door. Master Pen was not displeased 
to accompany his illustrious relative, who pointed out a dozen 
great men in their brief transit through St. James’s Street, and 
got bows from a Duke, at a crossing, a Bishop (on a cob), and 
a Cabinet Minister with an umbrella. The Duke gave the 
elder Pendennis a figure of a pipe-clayed glove to shake, which 
the Major embraced with great veneration ; and all Pen’s blood 
tingled, as he found himself in actual communication, as it 
were, with this famous man (for Pen had possession of the 
Major’s left arm, whilst that gentleman’s other wing was en- 
gaged with his Grace’s right), and he wished all Grey Friars’ 
School, all Oxbridge University, all Paternoster Row and the 
Temple, and Laura and his mother at Fairoaks, could be 
standing on each side of the street, to see the meeting between 
him and his uncle, and the most famous duke in Christendom. 

“ How do, Pendennis ? — fine day,” were his Grace’s re- 
markable words, and with a nod of his august head he passed 
on — in a blue frock coat and spotless white duck trowsers, 
in a white stock, with a shining buckle behind. 


PENDENNIS . 


373 


Old Pendennis, whose likeness to his grace has been re- 
marked, began to imitate him unconsciously, after they had 
parted, speaking with curt sentences, after the manner of the 
great man. We have all of us, no doubt, met with more than 
one military officer who has so imitated the manner of a cer- 
tain Great Captain of the Age ; and has, perhaps, changed his 
own natural character and disposition, because Fate had en- 
dowed him with an aquiline nose. In like manner have we not 
seen many another man pride himself of having a tall forehead 
and a supposed likeness to Mr. Canning ? many another go 
through life swelling with self-gratification on account of an 
imagined resemblance (we say “ imagined,” because that any- 
body should be really like that most beautiful and perfect of 
men is impossible) to the great and revered George IV. : 
many third parties, who wore low necks to their dresses be- 
cause they fancied that Lord Byron and themselves were simi- 
lar in appearance : and has not the grave closed but lately upon 
poor Tom Bickerstaff, who having no more imagination than 
Mr. Joseph Hume, looked in the glass and fancied himself like 
Shakspeare ? shaved his forehead so as farther to resemble the 
immortal bard, 'wrote tragedies incessantly, and died perfectly 
crazy — actually perished of his forehead ? These or similar 
freaks of vanity most people who have frequented the world 
must have seen in their experience. Pen laughed in his 
roguish sleeve at the manner in which his uncle began to imi- 
tate the great man from whom they had just parted : but Mr. 
Pen was as vain in his own way, perhaps, as the elder gentle- 
man, and strutted, with a very consequential air of his own, by 
the Major’s side. 

“ Yes, my dear boy,” said the old bachelor, as they saun- 
tered through the Green Park, where many poor children were 
disporting happily, and errand boys were playing at toss half- 
penny, and black sheep were grazing in the sunshine, and an 
actor was learning his part on a bench, and nlirsery maids and 
their charges sauntered here and there, and several couples 
were walking in a leisurely manner ; “ yes, depend on it, my 
boy ; for a poor man, there is nothing like having good ac- 
quaintances. Who were those men, with whom you saw me in 
the bow-window at Bays’s ? Two were Peers of the realm. 
Hobandnob will be a Peer, as soon as his grand-uncle dies, 
and he has his third seizure ; and of the other four, not one 
has less than his seven thousand a year. Did you see that 
dark blue brougham, with that tremendous stepping horse, 
waiting at the door of the club ? You’ll know it again. It is 


PENDENNIS. 


374 

Sir Hugh Trumpington’s ; he was never known to walk in his 
life j never appears in the streets on foot — never : and if he is 
going two doors off, to see his mother, the old dowager (to 
whom I shall certainly introduce you, for she receives some of 
the best company in London), gad, sir, he mounts his horse at 
No. 23, and dismounts again at No. 25 a. He is now up stairs 
at Bays’s, playing picquet with Count Punter : he is the second- 
best player in England — as well he may be ; for he plays every 
day of his life, except Sundays (for Sir Hugh is an uncom- 
monly religious man), from half-past three till half-past seven, 
when he dresses for dinner.” 

“ A very pious manner of spending his time,” Pen said, 
laughing, and thinking that his uncle was falling into the twad- 
dling state. 

“ Gad, sir, that is not the question. A man of his estate 
may employ his time as he chooses. When you are a baronet, 
a county member, with ten thousand acres of the best land in 
Cheshire, and such places as Trumpington (though he never 
goes there), you may do as you like.” 

“ And so that was his brougham, sir, was it ? ” the nephew 
said, with almost a sneer. 

“ His brougham — O ay, yes ! — and that brings me back to 
my point — revenons k nos moutons. Yes, begad ! revenons & 
nos moutons. Well, that brougham is mine if I choose, be- 
tween four and seven. Just as much mine as if I jobbed it 
from Tilbury’s, begad, for thirty pounds a month. Sir Hugh is 
the best-natured fellow in the world ; and if it hadn’t been so 
fine an afternoon as it is, you and I would have been in that 
brougham at this very minute, on our way to Grosvenor Place. 
That is the benefit of knowing rich men ; — I dine for nothing, 
sir ; — I go into the country, and I’m mounted for nothing. 
Other fellows keep hounds and gamekeepers for me. Sic vos 
non vobis , as we used to say at Grey Friars, hey ? I’m of the 
opinion of my old friend Leech, of the Forty-fourth ; and a 
devilish good shrewd fellow he was, as most Scotchmen are. 
Gad, sir, Leech used to say, ‘ He was so poor that he couldn’t 
afford to know a poor man.’ ” 

“You don’t act up to your principles, uncle,” Pen said, 
good-naturedly. 

“ Up to my principles ; how, sir? ” the Major asked, rather 
testily. 

“You would have cut me in Saint James’s Street, sir,” Pen 
said, “ were your practice not more benevolent than your theory ; 
you who live with dukes and magnates of the land, and would 


PENDENNIS. 


375 

take no notice of a poor devil like me.” By which speech, we 
may see that Mr, Pen was getting on in the world, and could 
flatter as well as laugh in his sleeve. 

Major Pendennis was appeased instantly, and very much 
pleased. He tapped affectionately his nephew’s arm on which 
he was leaning, and said, — “ You, sir, you are my flesh and 
blood ! Hang it, sir, I’ve been very proud of you and very fond 
of you, but for your confounded follies and extravagances — and 
wild oats, sir, which I hope you’ve sown. Yes, begad ! I hope 
you’ve sown ’em ; I hope you’ve sown ’em, begad ! My object, 
Arthur, is to make a man of you — to see you well placed in the 
world, as becomes one of your name and my own, sir. You 
have got yourself a little reputation by your literary talents, 
which I am very far from undervaluing, though in my time, 
begad, poetry' and genius and that sort of thing were devilish 
disreputable. There was poor Byron, for instance, who ruined 
himself, and contracted the worst habits by living with poets 
and newspaper-writers, and people of that kind. But the times 
are changed now — there’s a run upon literature — clever fellows 
get into the best houses in town, begad ! Tempora mutantur, 
sir, and, by Jove, I suppose whatever is is right, as Shakspeare 
says.” 

Pen did not think fit to tell his uncle who was the author 
who had made use of that remarkable phrase, and here de- 
scending from the Green Park, the pair made their way Into 
Grosvenor Place, and to the door of the mansion occupied there 
by Sir Francis and Lady Clavering. 

The dining-room shutters of this handsome mansion were 
freshly gilded ; the knockers shone gorgeous upon the newly- 
painted door ; the balcony before the drawing-room bloomed 
with a portable garden of the most beautiful plants, and with 
flowers, white, and pink, and scarlet ; the windows of the upper 
room (the sacred chamber and dressing-room of my lady, doubt- 
less), and even a pretty little casement of the third story, which 
keen-sighted Mr. Pen presumed to belong to the virgin bed- 
room of Miss Blanche Amory, were similarly adorned with 
floral ornaments, and the whole exterior face of the house pre- 
sented the most brilliant aspect which fresh new paint, shining 
plate glass, newly cleaned bricks, and spotless mortar, could 
offer to the beholder. 

“ How Strong must have rejoiced in organizing all this 
splendor,” thought Pen. He recognized the Chevalier’s genius 
in the magnificence before him. 

“ Lady Clavering is going out for her drive,” the Majoi 


PENDENNIS. 


37 « 

said. “We shall only have to leave our pasteboards, Arthur.” 
He used the word “pasteboards,” having heard it from some 
of the ingenious youth of the nobility about town, and as a 
modern phrase suited to Pen’s tender years. Indeed, as the 
two gentlemen reached the door, a landau drove up, a magnify 
cent yellow carriage, lined with brocade or satin of a faint 
cream color, drawn by wonderful gray horses, with flaming rib- 
bons, and harness blazing all over with crests : no less than 
three of these heraldic emblems surmounted the coats of arms 
on the panels, and these shields contained a prodigious number 
of quarterings, betokening the antiquity and splendor of the 
houses of Clavering and Snell. A coachman in a tight silver 
wig surmounted the magnificent hammercloth (whereon the 
same arms were worked in bullion), and controlled the prancing 
grays — a young man still, but of a solemn countenance, with a 
laced waistcoat and buckles in his shoes — little buckles, unlike 
those which John and Jeames, the footmen, wear, and which 
we know are large, and spread elegantly over the foot. 

One of the leaves of the hall door was opened, and John — 
one of the largest of his race — was leaning against the door 
pillar, with his ambrosial hair powdered, his legs crossed ; 
beautiful, silk-stockinged ; in his hand his cane, gold-headed, 
dolichoskion. Jeames was invisible, but near at hand, waiting 
in the hall, with the gentleman who does not wear livery, and 
ready to fling down the roll of hair-cloth over which her lady- 
ship was to step to her carriage. These things and men, the 
which to tell of demands time, are seen in the glance of a prac- 
tised eye : and, in fact, the Major and Pen had scarcely crossed 
the street, when the second battant of the door flew open ; the 
horse-hair carpet tumbled down the door steps to those of the 
carriage ; John was opening it on one side of the emblazoned 
door, and Jeames on the other, and two ladies, attired in the 
highest style of fashion, and accompanied by a third, who 
carried a Blenheim spaniel, yelping in a light blue ribbon, came 
forth to ascend the carriage. 

Miss Amory was the first to enter, which she did with aerial 
lightness, and took the place which she liked best. Lady 
Clavering next followed, but her ladyship was more mature of 
■age and heavy of foot, and one of those feet, attired in a green 
satin boot, with some part of a stocking, which was very fine, 
whatever the ankle might be which it encircled, might be seen 
swaying on the carriage-step, as her ladyship leaned for support 
on the arm of the unbending Jeames, by the enraptured observer 
of female beauty who happened to be passing at the time of 
this imposing ceremonial. 


PENDENNIS. 


377 


The Pendennises senior and junior beheld those charms as 
they came up to the door — the Major looking grave and courtly, 
and Pen somewhat abashed at the carriage and its owners ; for 
he thought of sundry little passages at Clavering, which made 
his heart beat rather quick. 

At that moment Lady Clavering, looking round, saw the 
pair — she was on the first carriage-step, and would have been 
in the vehicle in another second, but she gave a start back- 
wards (which caused some of the powder to fly from the hair of 
ambrosial Jeames), and crying out, “ Lor, if it isn’t Arthur Pen- 
dennis and the old Major ! ” jumped back to terra firma directly, 
and holding out two fat hands, encased in tight orange-colored 
gloves, the good-natured woman warmly greeted the Major and 
his nephew. 

“ Come in both of you. — Why haven’t you been before ? — 
Qet out, Blanche, and come and see your old friends. — O, I’m 
so glad to see you. We’ve been waitin and waitin for you ever 
so long. Come in, luncheon ain’t gone down,” cried out this 
hospitable lady, squeezing Pen’s hand in both hers (she had 
dropped the Major’s after a brief wrench of recognition), and 
Blanche, casting up her eyes towards the chimneys, descended 
from the carriage presently, with a timid, blushing, appealing 
look, and gave a little hand to Major Pendennis. 

The companion with the spaniel looked about irresolute, 
and doubting whether she should not take Fido his airing ; •'but 
she too turned right about face and entered the house, after 
Lady Clavering, her daughter, and the two gentlemen. And 
the carriage, with the prancing grays, was left unoccupied, save 
by the coachman in the silver wig. 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

IN WHICH THE SYLPH REAPPEARS. 

Better folks than Morgan, the valet, were not so well 
instructed as that gentleman, regarding the amount of Lady 
Clavering’s riches ; and the legend in London, upon her Lady- 
ship’s arrival in the polite metropolis, was, that her fortune was 
enormous. Indigo factories, opium clippers, banks overflowing 
with rupees, diamonds and jewels of native princes, and vast 
sums of interest paid by them for loans contracted by themselves 


PENDENNIS. 


378 

or their predecessors to Lady Clavering’s father, were mentioned 
as sources of her wealth. Her account at her London banker’s 
was positively known, and the sum embraced so many cyphers 
as to create as many O’s of admiration in the wondering 
hearer. It was a known fact that an envoy from an Indian 
Prince, a Colonel Altamont, the Nawaub of Lucknow’s prime 
favorite, an extraordinary man, who had, it was said, embraced 
Mahometanism, and undergone a thousand wild and perilous 
adventures, was at present in this country, trying to negotiate 
with the Begum Clavering, the sale of the Nawaub’s celebrated 
nose-ring diamond, “the light of the Dewan.” 

Under the title of the Begum, Lady Clavering’s fame began 
to spread in London before she herself descended upon the 
Capital, and as it has been the boast of Delolme, and Black- 
stone, and all panegyrists of the British Constitution, that we 
admit into our aristocracy merit of every kind, and that the 
lowliest-born man, if he but deserve it, may wear the robes of*a 
peer, and sit alongside of a Cavendish or a Stanley : so it 
ought to be the boast of our good society, that haughty though 
it be, naturally jealous of its privileges, and careful who shall 
be admitted into its circle, yet, if an individual be but rich 
enough, all barriers are .instantly removed, and he or she is 
welcomed, as from his wealth he merits to be. The fact shows 
our British independence and honest feeling — our higher orders 
are not such mere haughty aristocrats as the ignorant represent 
them : on the contrary, if a man have money they will hold out 
their hands to him, eat his dinners, dance at his balls, marry 
his daughters, or give their own lovely girls to his sons, as 
affably as your commonest roturier would do. 

As he had superintended the arrangements of the country 
mansion, our friend, the Chevalier Strong, gave the benefit of 
his taste and advice to the fashionable London upholsterers, 
who prepared the town house for the reception of the Clavering 
family. In the decoration of this elegant abode, honest Strong’s 
soul rejoiced as much as if he had been himself its proprietor. 
He hung and re-hung the pictures, he studied the positions of 
sofas, he had interviews with wine merchants and purveyors 
who were to supply the new establishment ; and at the same 
time the Baronet’s factotum and confidential friend took the 
opportunity of furnishing his own chambers, and stocking his 
snug little cellar : his friends complimented him upon the 
neatness of the former ; and the select guests who came in to 
share Strong’s cutlet now found a bottle of excellent claret to 
accompany the meal. The Chevalier was now, as he said, “ in 


PENDENNIS . 


3 7 ^ 


clover : he had a very comfortable set of rooms in Shepherd’s 
Inn. He was waited on by a former Spanish Legionary and 
comrade of his whom he had left at a breach of a Spanish fort, 
and found at a crossing in Tottenham-court Road, and whom 
he had elevated to the rank of body-servant to himself and to 
the chum who, at present, shared his lodgings. This was no 
other than the favorite of the Nawaub of Lucknow, the valiant 
Colonel Altamont. 

No man was less curious, or at any rate, more discreet, than 
Ned Strong, and he did not care to enquire into the mysterious 
connection which, very soon after their first meeting at Bay- 
mouth, was established between Sir Francis Clavering and the 
envoy of the Nawaub. The latter knew some secret regarding 
the former, which put Clavering into his power, somehow ; and 
Strong, who knew that his patron’s early life had been rather 
irregular, and that his career with his regiment in India had 
not been brilliant, supposed that the Colonel, who swore he 
knew Clavering well at Calcutta, had some hold upon Sir 
Francis, to which the latter was forced to yield. In truth, 
Strong had long understood Sir Francis Clavering’s character, 
as that of a man utterly weak in purpose, in principle, and in- 
tellect, a moral and physical trifler and poltroon. 

With poor Clavering, his Excellency had had one or two 
interviews after their Baymouth meeting, the nature of which 
conversations the Baronet did not confide to Strong : although 
he sent letters to Altamont by that gentleman, who was his 
ambassador in all sorts of affairs. On one of these occasions 
the Nawaub’s envoy must have been in an exceeding ill-humor ; 
for he crushed Clavering’s letter in his hand, and said with his- 
own .particular manner and emphasis : — 

“A hundred be hanged. I’ll have no more letters nor no 
more shilly-shally. Tell Clavering I’ll have a thousand, or by 
Jove I’ll split, and burst him all to atoms. Let him give me a 
thousand and I’ll go abroad, and I give you my honor as a 
gentleman, I’ll not ask him for no more for a year. Give him 
that message from me, Strong, my boy ; and tell him if the 
money ain’t here next Friday at 12 o’clock, as sure as my name’s 
what it is, I’ll have a paragraph in the newspaper on Saturday, 
and next week I’ll blow up the whole concern.” 

Strong carried back these words to his principal, on whom 
their effect was such that actually on the day and hour ap- 
pointed, the Chevalier made his appearance once more at 
Altamont’s hotel at Baymouth, with the sum of money required. 
Altamont was a gentleman, he said, and behaved as such ; he 


PENDENNTS. 


380 

paid his bill at the Inn, and the Baymouth paper announced 
his departure on a foreign tour. Strong saw him embark at 
Dover. “ It must be forgery at the very least,” he thought, 
'‘that has put Clavering into this fellow’s power, and the 
Colonel has got the bill. 

Before the year was out, however, this happy country saw 
the Colonel once more upon its shores. A confounded run on 
the red had finished him, he said, at Baden Baden : no gentle- 
man could stand against a color coming up fourteen times. 
He had been obliged to draw upon Sir Francis Clavering for 
means of returning home : and Clavering, though pressed for 
money (for he had election expenses, had set up his establish- 
ment in the country, and was engaged in furnishing his London 
house), yet found means to accept Colonel Altamont’s bill, 
though evidently very much against his will ; for in Strong’s 
hearing, Sir Francis wished to heaven, with many curses, that 
the Colonel could have been locked up in a debtor’s jail in 
Germany for life, so that he might never be troubled again. 

These sums for the Colonel Sir Francis was obliged to 
raise without the knowledge of his wife ; for though perfectly 
liberal, nay, sumptuous in her expenditure, the good lady had 
inherited a tolerable aptitude for business along with the large 
fortune of her father, Snell, and gave to her husband only such 
a handsome allowance as she thought befitted a gentleman of 
his rank. Now and again she would give him a present or 
pay an outstanding gambling debt ; but she always exacted a 
pretty accurate account of the monies so required ; and re- 
specting the subsidies to the Colonel, Clavering fairly told 
Strong that he couldn't speak to his wife. 

Part of Mr. Strong’s business in life was to procure this 
money and other sums, for his patron. And in the Chevalier’s 
apartments, in Shepherd’s Inn, many negotiations took place 
between gentlemen of the moneyed world and Sir Francis 
Clavering ; and many valuable bank-notes and pieces of stamped 
paper were passed between them. When a man has been in 
the habit of getting in debt from his early youth, and of ex- 
changing his promises to pay at twelve months against present 
sums of money, it would seem as if no piece of good fortune 
ever permanently benefited him : a little while after the advent 
of prosperity, the money-lender is pretty certain to be in the 
bills with the old signature in the market. Clavering found it 
more convenient to see these gentry at Strong’s lodgings than 
at his own ; and such was the Chevalier’s friendship for the 
Baronet, that although he did not possess a shilling of his own, 


PENDENNIS. 


38i 

his name might be seen as the drawer of almost all the bills of 
exchange which Sir Francis Clavering accepted. Having drawn 
Clavering’s bills, he got them discounted “ in the City.” When 
they became due he parleyed with the bill-holders, and gave 
them instalments of their debt, or got time in exchange for 
fresh acceptances. Regularly, or irregularly, gentlemen must 
live somehow : and as we read how, the other day, at Comorn, 
the troops forming that garrison were gay and lively, acted 
plays, danced at balls, and consumed their rations ; though 
menaced with an assault from the enemy without the walls, and 
with a gallows if the Austrians were successful, — so there are 
hundreds of gallant spirits in this town, walking about in good 
spirits, dining every day in tolerable gayety and plenty, and 
going to sleep comfortably ; with a bailiff always more or less 
near, and a rope of debt round their necks — the which trifling 
inconveniences, Ned Strong, the old soldier, bore very easily. 

But we shall have another opportunity of making acquaint- 
ance with these and some other interesting inhabitants of 
Shepherd’s Inn, and in the meanwhile are keeping Lady Cla- 
vering and her friends too long waiting on the doorsteps of 
Grosvenor Place. 

First they went into the gorgeous dining-room, fitted up, 
Lady Clavering couldn’t for goodness gracious tell why, in the 
middle-aged style, “ unless,” said her good-natured ladyship, 
laughing, “ because me and Clavering are middle T aged people ;” 
—and here they were offered the copious remains of the lun- 
cheon of which Lady Clavering and Blanche had just partaken. 
When nobody was near, our little Sylphide, who scarcely ate 
at dinner more than the six grains of rice of Amina, the friend 
of the Ghouls in the Arabian Nights, was most active with her 
knife and fork, and consumed a very substantial portion of 
mutton cutlets : in which piece of hypocrisy it is believed she 
resembled other young ladies of fashion. Pen and his uncle 
declined the refection, but they admired the dining-room with 
fitting compliments, and pronounced it “ very chaste,” that 
being the proper phrase. There were, indeed, high-backed 
Dutch chairs of the seventeenth century ; there was a sculp- 
tured carved buffet of the sixteenth ; there was a sideboard 
rolled out of the carved work of a church in the Low Countries, 
and a large brass cathedral lamp over the round oak table ; 
there were old family portraits from Wardour Street, and 
tapestry from France, bits of armor, double-handed swords 
and battle-axes made of carton-pierre, looking-glasses, statuettes 
of saints, and Dresden china — nothing, in a word, could be 


PENDENNIS . 


382 

chaster. Behind the dining-room was the library, fitted with 
busts and books all of a size, and wonderful easy chairs, and 
solemn bronzes in the severe classic style. Here it was that, 
guarded by double doors, Sir Francis smoked cigars, and read 
“ Bell’s Life in London,” and went to sleep after dinner, when 
he was not smoking over the billiard-table at his clubs, or 
punting at the gambling-houses in St. James. 

But what could equal the chaste splendor of the drawing- 
rooms ? — the carpets were so magnificently fluffy that your foot 
made no more noise on them than your shadow : on their white 
ground bloomed roses and tulips as big as warming-pans ; about 
the room were high chairs and low chairs, bandy-legged chairs, 
chairs so attenuated that it was a wonder any but a sylph could 
sit upon them, marqueterie-tables covered with marvellous 
gimcracks, china ornaments of all ages and countries, bronzes, 
gilt daggers, Books of Beauty, yataghans, Turkish papooshes 
and boxes of Parisian bonbons. Wherever you sat down there 
were Dresden shepherds and shepherdesses convenient at your 
elbow ; there were, moreover, light-blue poodles and ducks and 
cocks and hens in porcelain ; there were nymphs by Bou- 
cher, and shepherdesses by Greuze, very chaste indeed ; there 
were muslin curtains and brocade curtains, gilt cages with par- 
roquets and love birds, two squealing cockatoos, each out- 
squealing and out-chattering the other ; a clock singing tunes 
on a console-table, and other booming the hours like Great 
Tom, on the mantel-piece — there was, in a word, everything 
that comfort could desire, and the most elegant taste devise. 
A London drawing-room, fitted up without regard to expense, 
is surely one of the noblest and most curious sights of the 
present day. The Romans of the Lower Empire, the dear Mar- 
chionesses and Countesses of Louis XV., could scarcely have 
had a finer taste than our modern folks exhibit ; and everybody 
who saw Lady Clavering’s reception-rooms, was forced to con- 
fess that they were most elegant ; and that the prettiest rooms 
in London — Lady Harley Quin’s, Lady Hanway Wardour’s, or 
Mrs. Hodge-Podgson’s own, the great Railroad Croesus’ wife, 
were not fitted up with a more consummate “ chastity.” 

Poor Lady Clavering, meanwhile, knew little regarding these 
things, and had a sad want of respect for the splendors around 
her. “ I only know they cost a precious deal of money, Major,” 
she said to her guest, “ and that I don’t advise you to try one 
of them gossamer gilt chairs : I came down on one the night 
we gave our second dinner party. Why didn’t you come and 
see us before ? We’d have asked you to it.” 


PENDEIWIS . 


383 

“ You would have liked to see Mamma break a chair, 
wouldn’t you, Mr. Pendennis ? ” dear Blanche said with a sneer. 
She was angry because Pen was talking and laughing with 
Mamma, because Mamma had made a number of blunders in 
describing the house — for a hundred other good reasons. 

“ I should like to have been by to give Lady Clavering my 
arm if she had need of it,” Pen answered, with a bow and a 
blush. 

“ Quel preux Chevalier / ” cried the Sylphide, tossing up her 
little head. 

“ I have a fellow-feeling with those who fall, remember,” 
Pen said. “ I suffered myself very much from doing so once.” 

“ And you went home to Laura to console you,” said Miss 
Amory. Pen winced. He did not like the remembrance of 
the consolation which Laura had given to him, nor was he very 
well pleased to find that his rebuff in that quarter was known 
to the world : so as he had nothing to say in reply, he began 
to be immensely interested in the furniture round about him, 
and to praise Lady Clavering’s taste with all his might. 

“ Me, don’t praise me,” said honest Lady Clavering, “ it’s 
all the upholsterer’s doings and Captain Strong’s ; they did it 
all while he was at the Park — and — and — Lady Rockminster 
has been here and says the salongs are very well,” said Lady 
Clavering, with an air and tone of great deference. 

“ My cousin Laura has been staying with her,” Pen said. 

“ It’s not the dowager: it is the Lady Rockminster.” 

“ Indeed ! ” cried Major Pendennis, when he heard this 
great name of fashion. “ If you have her ladyship’s approval, 
Lady Clavering, you cannot be far wrong. No, no, you cannot 
be far wrong. Lady Rockminster, I should say, Arthur, is 
the very centre of the circle of fashion and taste. The rooms 
are beautiful indeed ! ” and the Major’s voice hushed as he 
spoke of this great lady, and he looked round and surveyed 
the apartments awfully and respectfully, as if he had been at 
church. 

“ Yes, Lady Rockminster has took us up,” said Lady Cla- 
vering. 

“Taken us up, Mamma,” cried Blanche, in a shrill voice. 

“ Well, taken us up, then,” said my lady, “ it’s very 
kind of her, and I dare say we shall like it when we git 
used to it, only at first one don’t fancy being took — well, 
taken up, at all. She is going to give our balls for us ; and 
wants to invite all our diners. But I won’t stand that. I will 
have my old friends and I won’t let her send all the cards out, 


PENDENNTS. 


3^4 

and sit mum at the head of my own table. You must come to 
me, Arthur and Major — come, let me see, on the 14th. — It ain't 
one of our grand dinners, Blanche,” she said, looking round 
at her daughter, who bit her lips and frowned very savagely for 
a sylphide. 

The Major, with a smile and a bow, said he would much 
rather come to a quiet meeting than to a grand dinner. He 
had had enough of those large entertainments, and preferred 
the simplicity of the home circle. 

“ I always think a dinner’s the best the second day,” said 
Lady Clavering, thinking to mend her first speech. “ On the 
1 4th we’ll be quite a snug little party; ” at which second blunder, 
Miss Blanche clasped her hands in despair and “ O, Mamma, 
vous etes incorrigible .” Major Pendennis vowed that he liked 
snug dinners of all things in the world, and confounded her 
ladyship’s impudence for daring to ask such a man as him to 
a second day’s dinner. But he was a man of an economical 
turn of mind, and bethinking himself that he could throw over 
these people if anything better should offer, he accepted with 
the blandest air. As for Pen, he was not a diner-out of thirty 
years’ standing as yet, and the idea of a fine feast in a fine 
house was still perfectly welcome to him. 

“ What was that pretty little quarrel which engaged itself 
between your worship and Miss Amory ? ” the Major asked of 
Pen, as they walked away together. “ I thought you used to 
be au mieux in that quarter.” 

“Used to be,” answered Pen, with a dandified air ; “is a 
vague phrase regarding a woman. Was and is are two very 
different terms, sir, as regards women’s hearts especially.” 

“ Egad, they change as we do,” cried the elder. “ When 
we took the Cape of Good Hope, I recollect there was a lady 
who talked of poisoning herself for your humble servant ; and, 
begad, in three months, she ran away from her husband with 
somebody else. Don’t get yourself entangled with that Miss 
Amory. She is forward, affected, and underbred ; and her 
character is somewhat — never mind what. But don’t think of 
her ; ten thousand pound won’t do for you. What, my good 
fellow, is ten thousand pounds ? I would scarcely pay that girl’s 
milliner’s bill with the interest of the money.” 

“You seem to be a connoisseur in millinery, Uncle,” Pen 
said. 

“ I was sir, I was,” replied the senior : “ and the old war- 
horse, you know, never hears the sound of a trumpet, but he 
begins to he, he ! — you understand,” — and he gave a killing 


PENDENNIS. 385 

though somewhat superannuated leer and bow to a carriage 
that passed them and entered the Park. - 

“ Lady Catherine Martingale’s carriage,” he said, “mons’ous 
fine girls the daughters, though, gad, I remember their mother 
a thousand times handsomer. No, Arthur, my dear fellow, with 
your person and expectations, you ought'to make a good coup 
in marriage some day or other; and though I wouldn’t have 
this repeated at Fairoaks, you rogue, ha ! ha ! a reputation for 
a little wickedness, and for being an homme. dangereux , don’t 
hurt a young fellow with the women. They like it, sir — they 
hate a milksop * * # young men must be young men, you 
know. But for marriage,” continued the veteran moralist, 
“ that is a very different matter. Marry a woman with money. 
I’ve told you before it is as easy to get a rich wife as a poor 
one ; and a doosed deal more comfortable to sit down to a 
well-cooked dinner, with your little entrees nicely served, than 
to have nothing but a dammed cold leg of mutton between you 
and your wife. We shall have a good dinner on the 14th, when 
we dine with Sir Francis Clavering : stick, to that, my boy, in 
your relations with the family. Cultivate ’em, but keep ’em 
for dining. No more of your youthful follies and nonsense 
about love in a cottage.” 

“ It must be a cottage with a double coach-house, a cottage 
of gentility, sir,” said Pen, quoting the hackneyed ballad of the 
Devil’s Walk : but his Uncle did not know that poem (though, 
perhaps, he might be leading Pen upon the very promenade in 
question), and went on with his philosophical remarks, very 
much pleased with the aptness of the pupil to whom he 
addressed them. Indeed Arthur Pendennis was a clever fel- 
low, who took his color very readily from his neighbor and 
found the adaptation only too easy. 

Warrington, the grumbler, growled out that Pen was be- 
coming such a puppy that soon there would be no bearing him. 
But the truth is, the young man’s success and dashing manners 
pleased his elder companion. He liked to see Pen gay and 
spirited, and brimful of health, and life, and hope; as a man 
who has long since left off being amused with clown and harle- 
quin, still gets a pleasure in watching a child at a pantomime. 
Mr. Pen’s former sulkiness disappeared with his better fortune : 
and he bloomed as the sun began to shine upon him. 

2 5 


386 


PENDENNIS, 


CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

IN WHICH COLONEL ALTAMONT APPEARS AND DISAPPEARS. 

On the day appointed, Major Pendennis, who had formed 
no better engagement, and Arthur, who desired none, arrived 
together to dine with Sir Francis Clavering. The only tenants 
of the drawing-room when Pen and his uncle reached it, were 
Sir Francis and his wife, and our friend Captain Strong, whom 
Arthur was very glad to see, though the Major looked very 
sulkily at Strong, being by no means well pleased to sit down 
to dinner with Clavering’s d — house-steward, as he irreverently 
called Strong. But Mr. Welbore Welbore, Clavering’s country 
neighbor and brother member of Parliament, speedily arriving, 
Pendennis the elder was somewhat appeased, for Welbore, 
though perfectly dull, and taking no more part in the conversa- 
tion at dinner than the footman behind his chair, was a respect- 
able country gentleman of ancient family and seven thousand 
a year ; and the Major felt always at ease in such society. To 
these were added other persons of note : the Dowager Lady 
Rockminster, who had her reasons for being well with the 
Clavering family, and the Lady Agnes Foker, with her son Mr. 
Harry, our old acquaintance. Mr. Pynsent could not come, 
his parliamentary duties keeping him at the House, duties which 
sat upon the two other senators very lightly. Miss Blanche 
Amory was the last of the company who made her appearance. 
She was dressed in a killing white silk dress, which displayed 
her pearly shoulders to the utmost advantage. Foker whispered 
to Pen, who regarded her with eyes of evident admiration, that 
he considered her “ a stunner.” She chose to be very gracious 
to Arthur upon this day, and held out her hand most cordially, 
and talked about dear Fairoaks, and asked for dear Laura and 
his mother, and said she was longing to go back to the country, 
and in fact was entirely simple, affectionate, and artless. 

Harry Foker thought he had never seen anybody so amiable 
and delightful. Not accustomed much to the society of ladies, 
and ordinarily being dumb in their presence, he found that he 
could speak before Miss Amory, and became uncommonly 
lively and talkative, even before the dinner was announced and 
the party descended to the lower rooms. He would have longed 


PENDENNIS. 


387 

to give his arm to the fair Blanche, and conduct her down the 
broad carpeted stair ; but she fell to the lot of Pen upon this 
occasion, Mr. Foker being appointed to escort Mrs. Welbore 
Wei bore, in consequence of his superior rank as an earl’s 
grandson. 

But though he was separated from the object of his desire 
during the passage down stairs, the delighted Foker found him- 
self by Miss Amory’s side at the dinner-table, and flattered 
himself that he had manoeuvred very well in securing that 
happy place. It may be that the move was not his, but that it 
was made by another person. Blanche had thus the two young 
men, one on each side of her, and each tried to render himself 
gallant and agreeable. 

Foker’s mamma, from her place, surveying her darling boy, 
was surprised at his vivacity. Harry talked constantly to his 
fair neighbor about the topics of the day. 

“ Seen Taglioni in the Sylphide, Miss Amory ? Bring me 
that souprame of Volile again, if you please (this was addressed 
to the attendant near him), very good : can’t think where the 
souprames come from ; what becomes of the legs of the fowls, 
I wonder ? She’s clipping in the Sylphide, ain’t she ? ” and he 
began very kindly to hum the pretty air which pervades that 
prettiest of all ballets, now faded into the past with that most 
beautiful and gracious of all dancers. Will the young folks 
ever see anything so charming, anything so classic, anything 
like Taglioni ? 

“ Miss Amory is a sylph herself,” said Mr. Pen. 

“ What a delightful tenor voice you have, Mr. Foker,” said 
the young lady. “ I am sure you have been well taught. I 
sing a little rriyself. I should like to sing with you.” 

Pen remembered that words very similar had been addressed 
to himself by the young lady, and that she had liked to sing 
wdth him in former days. And sneering within himself, he 
wondered with how many other gentlemen she had sung duets 
since his time ? But he did not think fit to put this awkward 
question aloud : and only said, with the very tenderest air 
which he could assume, “ I should like to hear you sing again, 
Miss Blanche. I never heard a voice I liked so well as yours, 
I think.” 

“ I thought you liked Laura’s,” said Miss Blanche. 

“ Laura’s is a contralto : and that voice is very often out, 
you know,” Pen said, bitterly. “ I have heard a great deal of 
music, in London,” he continued. “ I’m tired of those profes- 
sional people — they sing too loud — or I have grown too old or 


PENDENNIS. 


388 

too blase. One grows old very soon, in London, Miss Amory. 
And like all old fellows, I only care for the songs I heard in my 
youth.” 

“ I like English music best. I don’t care for foreign songs 
much. Get me some saddle of mutton,” said Mr. Foker. 

“ I adore English ballads of all things,” said Miss Amory. 

“ Sing me one of the old songs after dinner, will you ? ” 
said Pen, with an imploring voice. 

“ Shall I sing you an English song, after dinner ? ” asked 
the Sylphide, turning to Mr. Foker. “ I will, if you will promise 
to come up soon : ” and she gave him a perfect broadside of 
her eyes. 

“ 77/ come up after dinner, fast enough,” he said simply. 
“ I don’t care about much wine afterwards — I take my whack 
at dinner — I mean my share, you know ; and when I have had 
as much as I want, I toddle up to tea. I’m a domestic char- 
acter, Miss Amory — my habits are simple — and when I’m 
pleased I’m generally in a good-humor, ain’t I, Pen ? — that 
/jelly, if you please — not that one, the other with the cherries 
inside. How the doose do they get those cherries inside the 
jellies ? ” In this way the artless youth prattled on : and Miss 
Amory listened to him with inexhaustible good-humor. When 
the ladies took their departure for the upper regions, Blanche 
made the two young men promise faithfully to quit the table 
soon, and departed with kind glances to each. She dropped 
her gloves on Foker’s side of the table, and her handkerchief 
on Pen’s. Each had some little attention paid to him ; her 
politeness to Mr. Foker was perhaps a little more encouraging 
than her kindness to Arthur : but the benevolent little creature 
did her best to make both the gentlemen happy. Foker caught 
her last glance as she rushed out of the door ; that bright look 
passed over Mr. Strong’s broad white waistcoat, and shot 
straight at Harry Foker’s. The door closed on the charmer : 
he sat down with a sigh, and swallowed a bumper of claret. 

As the dinner at which Pen and his uncle took their places 
was not one of our grand parties, it had been served at a con- 
siderable earlier hour than those ceremonial banquets of Ahe 
London season, which custom has ordained shall scarcely take 
place before nine o’clock ; and the company being small, and 
Miss Blanche, anxious to betake herself to her piano in the 
drawing-room, giving constant hints to her mother to retreat, — • 
Lady Clavering made that signal very speedily, so that it was 
quite daylight yet when the ladies reached the upper apartments, 


PENDENNIS . 


3 8 9 

from the flower-embroidered balconies of which they could 
command a view of the two Parks, of the poor couples and 
children still sauntering in the one, and of the equipages of 
ladies and the horses of dandies passing through the arch of 
the other. The sun, in a word, had not set behind the elms of 
Kensington Gardens, and was still gilding the statue erected 
by the ladies of England in honor of his Grace the Duke of 
Wellington, when Lady Clavering and her female friends left 
the gentlemen drinking wine. • 

The windows of the dining-room were opened to let in the 
fresh air, and afforded to the passers-by in the street a pleasant 
or, perhaps, tantalizing view of six gentlemen in white waist- 
coats, with a quantity of decanters and a variety of fruits before 
them — little boys, as they passed and jumped up at the area 
railings, and took a peep, said to one another, “ Mi hi, Jim, 
shouldn’t you like to be there, and have a cut of that there 
pine-apple ? ” — the horses and carriages of the nobility and 
gentry passed by, conveying them to Belgravian toilets : the 
policeman, with clamping feet, patrolled up and down before 
the mansion : the shades of evening began to fall : the gasman 
came and lighted the lamps before Sir Francis’s door : the 
butler entered the dining-room, and illuminated the antique 
gothic chandelier over the antique carved oak dining-table : so 
that from outside the house you looked inwards upon a night 
scene of feasting and wax candles ; and from within you beheld 
a vision of a calm summer evening, and the wall of Saint 
J ames’s Park, and the sky above, in. which a star or two was 
just beginning to twinkle. 

Jeames, with folded legs, leaning against the door-pillar 
of his master’s abode, looked forth musingly upon the latter 
tranquil sight : whilst a spectator, clinging to the railings, 
examined the former scene. Policemen X, passing, gave his 
attention to neither, but fixed it upon the individual holding by 
the railings, and gazing into Sir Francis Clavering’s dining- 
room, where Strong was laughing and talking away, making the 
conversation for the party. 

The man at the railings was very gorgeously attired with 
chains, jewelry, and waistcoats, which the illumination from 
the house lighted up to great advantage ; his boots were shiny ; 
he had brass buttons to his coat, and large white wristbands 
over his knuckles; and indeed looked so grand, that X imagined 
he beheld a member of parliament, or a person of consideration 
before him. Whatever his rank, however, the M.P., or person 
of consideration, was considerably excited by wine ; for he 


39 ° 


PENDENNIS. 


lurched and reeled somewhat in his gait, and his hat was cocked 
over his wild and bloodshot eyes in a manner which no sober 
hat ever could assume. His copious black hair was evidently 
surreptitious, and his whiskers of the Tyrian purple. 

As Strong’s laughter, following after one of his ovmgros mots, 
came ringing out of window, this gentleman without laughed 
and sniggered in the queerest way likewise, and he slapped his 
thigh and winked at Jeames pensive in the portico, as much as 
to say, “ Plush, my boy, isn’t that a good story ? ” 

Jeames’s attention had been gradually drawn from the moon 
in the heavens to this sublunary scene ; and he was puzzled 
and alarmed by the appearance of the man in shiny boots. 
“ A holtercation,” he remarked, afterwards, in the servants’ 
hall — a “ holtercation with a feller in the streets is never no 
good ; and indeed, he was not hired for any such purpose.” 
So, having surveyed the man for some time, who went on laugh- 
ing, reeling, nodding his head with tipsy knowingness, Jeames 
looked out of the portico, and softly called “ Pleaceman,” and 
beckoned to that officer. 

X marched up resolute, with one Berlin glove stuck in his 
belt-side, and Jeames simply pointed with his index finger to 
the individual who was laughing against the railings. Not one 
single word more than “ Pleaceman,” did he say, but stood 
there in the calm summer evening, pointing calmly : a grand 
sight. 

X advanced to the individual and said, “ Now, sir, will you 
have the kindness to move hon ? ” 

The individual, who was in perfect good-humor, did not 
appear to hear one word which Policeman X uttered, but 
nodded and waggled his grinning head at Strong, until his hat 
almost fell from his head over the area railings. 

“ Now, sir, move on, do you hear ? ” cries X, in a much 
more peremptory tone, and he touched the stranger gently with 
one of the fingers inclosed in the gauntlets of the Berlip 
woof. 

He of the many rings instantly started, or rather staggered 
back, into what is called an attitude of self-defence, and in that 
position began the operation which is entitled “ squaring,” at 
Policeman X, and showed himself brave and warlike, if unsteady. 
“ Hullo ! keep your hands off a gentleman,” he said, with an 
oath which need not be repeated. 

“ Move on out of this,” said X, “ and don’t be a blocking up 
the pavement, staring into gentlemen’s dining-rooms.” 

“ Not stare — ho, ho, — not stare, — that is a good one,” re- 


PEND ENNIS. 


39 1 

plied the other, with a satiric laugh and sneer — “Who’s to 
prevent me from staring, looking at my friends, if I like ? not 
you, old highblows.” 

“ Friends ! I dessay. Move on,” answered X. 

“ If you touch me, I’ll .pitch into you, I will,” roared the 
other, “ I tell you I know ’em all — That’s Sir Francis Claver- 
ing, Baronet, M. P. — I know him, and he knows me — and that’s 
Strong, and that’s the young chap that made the row at the 
ball. I say, Strong, Strong ! ” 

“ It’s that d — Altamont,” cried Sir Francis within, with a 
start and a guilty look ; and Strong also, with a look of annoy- 
ance, got up from the table, and ran out to the intruder. 

A gentleman in a white waistcoat, running out from a din- 
ing-room bareheaded, a policeman, and an individual decently 
attired, engaged in almost fisticuffs on the pavement, were 
enough to make a crowd, even in that quiet neighborhood, at 
half-past eight o’clock in the evening, and a small mob began 
to assemble before Sir Francis Clavering’s door. “ For God’s 
sake, come in,” Strong said, seizing his acquaintance’s arm. 
“ Send for a cab, James, if you please,” he added in an under 
voice to that domestic; and carrying the excited gentleman out 
of the street, the outer door was closed upon him, and the 
small crowd began to move away. 

Mr. Strong had intended to convey the stranger into Sir 
Francis’s private sitting-room, where the hats of the male guests 
were awaiting them, and having there soothed his friend by 
bland conversation, to have carried him off as soon as the cab 
arrived — but the new comer was in a great state of wrath at 
the indignity which had been put upon him ; and when Strong 
would have led him into the second door, said in a tipsy voice, 
“ That ain’t the door — that’s the dining-room door — where the 
drink’s going on — and I’ll go and have some, by Jove ; I’ll go 
and have some.” At this audacity the butler stood aghast in 
the hall, and placed himself before the door : but it opened be- 
hind him, and the master of the house made his appearance, 
with anxious looks. 

“ I will have some, — by I will,” the intruder was roar- 

ing out, as Sir Francis came forward. “ Hullo ! Clavering, I 
say, I’m come to have some wine with you ; hay ! old boy — 
hay, old corkscrew ? Get us a bottle of the yellow seal, you 
old thief — the very best — a hundred rupees a dozen, and no 
mistake.” 

The host reflected a moment over his company. There is 
only Welbore, Pendennis, and those two lads, he thought — and 


39 2 


PEND ENNIS. 


with a forced laugh and piteous look, he said, — “ Well, Alta* 
mont, come in. I am very glad to see you, I’m sure.” 

Colonel Altamont, for the intelligent reader has doubtless 
long ere this discovered in the stranger His Excellency the 
Ambassador of the Nawaub of Lucknow, reeled into the din- 
ing-room, with a triumphant look towards Jeames, the footman, 
which seemed to say, “There, sir, what do you think of that? 
Now, am I a gentleman or no ? ” and sank down into the first 
vacant chair. Sir Francis Clavering timidly stammered out the 
Colonel’s name to his guest Mr. Welbore Welbore, and His 
Excellency began drinking wine forthwith and gazing round 
upon the company, now with the most wonderful frowns, and 
anon with the blandest smiles, and hiccupped remarks encomi- 
astic of the drink which he was imbibing. 

“Very singular man. Has resided long in a native court 
in India,” Strong said, with great gravity, the Chevalier’s pres- 
ence o£ mind never deserting him — “ in those Indian courts 
they get very singular habits.” 

“Very,” said Major Pendennis, dryly, and wondering what 
in goodness’ name was the company into which he had got. 

Mr. Foker was pleased with the new-comer. “ It’s the 
man who would sing the Malay song at the Back Kitchen,” he 
whispered to Pen. “Try this pine, sir,” he then said to Colonel 
Altamont, “it’s uncommonly fine.” 

“ Pines — I’ve seen ’em> feed pigs on pines,” said the 
Colonel. 

“ All the Nawaub of Lucknow’s pigs are fed on pines,” 
Strong whispered to Major Pendennis. 

“ O, of course,” the Major answered. Sir Francis Clavering 
was, in the meanwhile, endeavoring to make an excuse to his 
brother guest, for the new-comer’s condition, and muttered 
something regarding Altamont, that he was an extraordinary 
character, very eccentric, very — had Indian habits — didn’t 
understand the rules of English society ; to which old Welbore, 
a shrewd old gentleman, who drank his wine with great regu- 
larity, said, “ that seemed pretty clear.” 

Then, the Colonel seeing Pen’s honest face, regarded it for 
a while with as much steadiness as became his condition ; and 
said, “ I know you, too, young fellow. I remember you. 
Baymouth ball, by Jingo. Wanted to fight the Frenchman. I 
remember you ; ” and he laughed, and he squared with his fists, 
and seemed hugely amused in the drunken depths of his mind, 
as these recollections passed, or, rather, reeled across it. 

“ Mr. Pendennis, you remember Colonel Altamont, at Bay 





COLONEL ALTAMONT REFUSES TO MOVE ON 




PENDENNIS . 


393 


mouth * •’ Strong said : upon which Pen, bowing rather stiffly, 
said, “ he naci the pleasure of remembering that circumstance 
fjevfeetly.” 

“ What s his name ? ” cried the Colonel. Strong named 
Mr. Pendennis again. 

“ Pendennis ! — Pendennis be hanged ! ” Altamont roared 
out to the surprise of every one, and thumping with his fist on 
the table. 

“ My name is also Pendennis, sir,” said the Major, whose 
dignity was exceedingly mortified by the evening’s events — that 
he, Major Pendennis, should have been asked to such a party, 
and that a drunken man should have been introduced to it. 
“ My name is Pendennis, and I will be obliged to you not to 
curse it too loudly.” 

The tipsy man turned round to look at him, and as he 
■ looked, it appeared as if Colonel Altamont suddenly grew 
sober. He put his hand across his forehead, and in doing so, 
displaced somewhat the black wig which he wore ; and his eyes 
stared fiercely at the Major, who, in his turn, like a resolute 
old warrior as he was, looked at his opponent very keenly and 
steadily. At the end of the mutual inspection, Altamont began 
to button up his brass-buttoned coat, and rising up from his 
chair, suddenly, and to the company’s astonishment, reeled 
towards the door, and issued from it, followed by Strong : all 
that the latter heard him utter was — “ Captain Beak ! Captain 
Beak, by jingo ! ” 

There had not passed above a quarter of an hour from his 
strange appearance to his equally sudden departure. The two 
young men and the baronet’s other guest wondered at the 
scene, and could find no explanation for it. Clavering seemed 
exceedingly pale and agitated, and turned with looks of almost 
terror towards Major Pendennis. The latter had been eyeing 
his host keenly for a minute or two. “ Do you know him ? ” 
asked Sir Francis of the Major. 

“ I am sure I have seen the fellow,” the Major replied, 
looking as if he, too, was puzzled. “Yes, I have it. He was 
a deserter from the Horse Artillery, who got into the Nawaub’s 
service. I remember his face quite well.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Clavering, with a sigh which indicated immense 
relief of mind, and the Major looked at him with a twinkle of 
his sharp old eyes. The cab which Strong had desired to be 
called, drove away with the Chevalier and Colonel Altamont ; 
coffee was brought to the remaining gentlemen, and they went 
up stairs to the ladies in the drawing-room, Foker declaring 


394 


PENDENNIS. 


confidentially to Pen that “ this was the rummest go he ever 
saw,” which decision Pen said, laughing, “showed great dis- 
crimination on Mr. Foker’s part.” 

Then, according to her promise, Miss Amory made music 
for the young men. Foker was enraptured with her perform- 
ance, and kindly joined in the airs which she sang, when he 
happened to be acquainted with them. Pen affected to talk 
aside with others of the party, but Blanche brought him quickly 
to the piano, by singing some of his own words, those which we 
have given in a previous number, indeed, and which the 
Sylphide had herself, she said, set to music. I don’t know 
whether the air was hers, or how much of it was arranged for 
her by Signor Twankidillo, from whom she took lessons : but 
good or bad, original or otherwise, it delighted Mr. Pen, who 
remained by her side, and turned the leaves now for her most 
assiduously — “ Gad ! how I wish I could write verses like you, 
Pen,” Foker sighed afterwards to his companion. “ If I could 
do ’em, wouldn’t I, that’s all ? But I never was a dab at writ- 
ing, you see, and I’m sorry I was so idle when I was at school.” 

No mention was made before the ladies of the curious little 
scene which had been transacted below stairs ; although Pen 
was just on the point of describing it to Miss Amory, when 
that young lady inquired for Captain Strong, who she wished 
should join her in a duet. But chancing to look up towards 
Sir Francis Clavering, Arthur saw a peculiar expression of 
alarm in the baronet’s ordinarily vacuous face, and discreetly * 
held his tongue. It was rather a dull evening. Welbore went 
to sleep, as he always did at music and after dinner : nor did 
Major Pendennis entertain the ladies with copious anecdotes 
and endless little scandalous stories, as his wont was, but sat 
silent for the most part, and appeared to be listening to the 
music, and watching the fair young performer. 

The hour of departure having arrived, the Major rose, 
regretting that so delightful an evening should have passed 
away so quickly, and addressed a particularly fine compliment 
to Miss Amory, upon her splendid talents as a singer. “ Your 
daughter, Lady Clavering,” he said to that lady, “ is a perfect 
nightingale — a perfect nightingale, begad ! I have scarcely 
ever heard anything equal to her, and her pronunciation of 
every language — begad, of every language — seems to me to be 
perfect ; and the best houses in London must open before a 
young lady who has such talents, and, allow an old fellow to 
say, Miss Amory, such a face.” 

Blanche was as much astonished by these compliments as 


PEND ENNIS. 


39 $ 


Pen was, to whom his uncle, a little time since, had been 
speaking in very disparaging terms of the Sylph. The Major 
and the two young men walked home together, after Mr. Foker 
had placed his mother in her carriage, and procured a light for 
an enormous cigar. 

The young gentleman’s company or his tobacco did not 
appear to be agreeable to Major Pendennis, who eyed him 
askance several times, and with a look which plainly indicated 
that he wished Mr. Foker would take his leave ; but Foker 
hung on resolutely to the uncle and nephew, even until they 
came to the former’s door in Bury Street, where the Major 
wished the lads good-night. 

“ And I say, Pen,” he said in a confidential whisper, calling 
his nephew back, “ mind you make a point of calling in Gros- 
vernor Place to-morrow. They’ve been uncommonly civil ; 
mons’ously civil and kind.” 

Pen promised and wondered, and the Major’s door having 
been closed upon him by Morgan, Foker took Pen’s arm, and 
walked with him for some time silently puffing his cigar. At 
last, when they had reached Charing Cross on Arthur’s way 
home to the Temple, Harry Foker relieved himself, and broke 
out with that eulogium upon poetry, and those regrets regard- 
ing a misspent youth which have just been mentioned. And 
all the way along the Strand, and up to the door of Pen’s very 
staircase, in Lamb Court, Temple, young Harry Foker did not 
cease to speak about singing and Blanche Amory. 


CHAPTER XXXIX. 

RELATES TO MR. HARRY FOKER’S AFFAIRS. 

Since that fatal but delightful night in Grosvenor Place, 
Mr. Harry Foker’s heart had been in such a state of agitation 
as you would hardly have thought so great a philosopher could 
endure. When we remember what good advice he had given 
to Pen in former days, how an early wisdom and knowledge of 
the world had manifested itself in the gifted youth ; how a con- 
stant course of self-indulgence, such as becomes a gentleman 
of his means and expectations, ought by right to have increased 
his cynicism, and made him, with every succeeding day of his 


PENDENNIS. 


39 6 


40- 


life, care less and less for every individual in the world, and with 
the single exception of Mr. Harry Foker, one may wonder that 
he should fall into the mishap to which most of us are subject 
once or twice in our lives, and disquiet his great mind about a 
woman. But Foker, though early wise was still a man. He 
could no more escape the common lot than Achilles, or Ajax, 
or Lord Nelson, or Adam our first father, and now, his time 
being come, young Harry became a victim to Love, the All- 
conqueror. 

When he went to the Back Kitchen that night after quitting 
Arthur Pendennis at his staircase door in Lamb Court, the gin- 
twist and devilled turkey had no charms for him, the jokes of 
ftk companions fell flatly on his ear ; and when Mr. Hodgen, 
the singer of “ The Body Snatcher,” had a new chant even 
more dreadful and humorous than that famous composition, 
Foker, although he appeared his friend, and said “ Bravo 
Hodgen,” as common politeness and his position as one of the 
chefs of the Back Kitchen bound him to do, yet never dis- 
tinctly heard one word of the song, which under its title of 
“ The Cat in the Cupboard,” Hodgen has since rendered so 
famous. Late and very tired, he slipped into his private apart- 
ments at home and sought the downy pillow, but his slumbers 
were disturbed by the fever of his soul, and the image of Miss 
Amory. 

Heavens, how stale and distasteful his former pursuits and 
friendships appeared to him ! He had not been, up to the 
present time, much accustomed to the society of females of his 
own rank in life. When he spoke of such, he called them 
“ modest women.” That virtue which let us hope they pos- 
sessed, had not hitherto compensated to Mr. Foker for the 
absence of more lively qualities which most of his own relatives 
did not enjoy, and which he found in Mesdemoiselles the ladies 
of the theatre. His mother, though good and tender, did not 
amuse her boy ; his cousins, the daughters of his maternal 
uncle, the respectable Earl of Rosherville, wearied him beyond 
measure. One was blue, and a geologist ; one was a horse- 
woman, and smoked cigars ; one was exceedingly Low Church, 
and had the most heterodox views on religious matters ; at 
least, so the other said, who was herself of the very Highest 
Church faction, and made the cupboard in her room into an 
oratory, and fasted on every Friday in the year. Their paternal 
house of Drummington, Foker could very seldom be got to 
visit. He swore he had rather go on the tread-mill than stay 
there. He was not much beloved by the inhabitants. Lord 


PENDENNIS . 


397 

Erith, Lord Rosherville’s heir, considered his cousin a low 
person, of deplorably vulgar habits and manners ; while Foker, 
and with equal reason, voted Erith a prig and a dullard, the 
nightcap of the House of Commons, the Speaker’s opprobrium, 
the dreariest of philanthropic spouters. Nor could George 
Robert, Earl of Gravesend and Rosherville, ever forget that on 
one evening when he condescended to play at billiards with his 
nephew, that young gentleman poked his lordship in the side 
with his cue, and said, “ Well, old cock, I’ve seen many a bad 
stroke in my life, but I never saw such a bad one as that there.” 
He played the game out with angelic sweetness of temper, for 
Harry was his guest as well as his nephew ; but he was nearly 
having a fit in the night ; and he kept to his own rooms until 
young Harry quitted Drummington on his return to Oxbridge, 
where the interesting youth was finishing his education at the 
time when the occurrence took place. It was an awful blow 
to the venerable earl ; the circumstance was never alluded to 
in the family; he shunned Foker whenever he came to see 
them in London or in the country, and could hardly be brought 
to gasp out a “ How d’ye do ? ” to the young blasphemer. 
But he would not break his sister Agnes’s heart, by banishing 
Harry from the family altogether; nor, indeed, could he afford 
to break with Mr. Foker, senior, between whom and his lord- 
ship there had been many private transactions, producing an 
exchange of bank checks from Mr. Foker, and autographs 
from the earl himself, with the letters I O U written over his 
illustrious signature. 

Besides the four daughters of Lord Gravesend whose various 
qualities have been enumerated in the former paragraph, his 
lordship was blessed with a fifth girl, the Lady Ann Milton, 
who, from her earliest years and nursery, had been destined to 
a peculiar position in life. It was ordained between her pa- 
rents and her aunt, that when Mr. Harry Foker attained a 
proper age, Lady Ann should become his wife. The idea had 
been familiar to her mind when she yet wore pinafores, and 
when Harry, the dirtiest of little boys, used to come back with 
black eyes from school to Drummington, or to his father’s 
house of Logwood, where Lady Ann lived much with her aunt. 
Both of the young people coincided with the arrangement pro- 
posed by the elders, without any protests or difficulty. It no 
more entered Lady Ann’s mind to question the order of her 
father, than it would have entered Esther’s to dispute the 
commands of Ahasuerus. The heir-apparent of the house 
of Foker was also obedient ; for when the old gentleman 


PEND ENNIS. 


39 8 

said, “ Harry, your uncle and I have agreed that when 
you’re of a proper age, you’ll marry Lady Ann. She won’t 
have any money, but she’s good blood, and a good one to look 
at, and I shall make you comfortable. If you refuse, you’ll 
have your mother’s jointure, and two hundred a year during 
my life.” — Harry, who knew that his sire, though a man of few 
words, was yet implicitly to be trusted, acquiesced at once in the 
parental decree, and said, “ Well, sir, if Ann’s agreeable, I say 
ditto. She’s not a bad-looking girl.” 

“ And she has the best blood in England, sir. Your mother’s 
blood, your own blood, sir,” said the Brewer. “ There’s noth- 
ing like it, sir.” 

“ Well, sir, as you like it,” Harry replied. “ When you want 
me, please ring the bell. Only there’s no hurry, and I hope 
you’ll give us a long day. I should like to have my fling out 
before I marry.” 

“ Fling away, Harry ! ” answered the benevolent father. 
“ Nobody prevents you, do they ? ” And so very little more was 
said upon this subject, and Mr. Harry pursued those amuse- 
ments in life which suited him best ; and hung up a little pic- 
ture of his cousin in his sitting-room, amidst the French prints, 
the favorite actresses and dancers, the racing and coaching 
works of art, which suited his taste and formed his gallery. It 
was an insignificant little picture, representing a simple round 
face with ringlets ; and it made, as it must be confessed, a very 
poor figure by the side of Mademoiselle Petitot, dancing over 
a rainbow, or Mademoiselle Redowa, grinning in red boots and 
a lancer’s cap. 

Being engaged and disposed of, Lady Ann Milton did not 
go out so much in the world as her sisters : and often stayed 
at home in London at the family house in Gaunt Square, when 
her mamma with the other ladies went abroad. They talked 
and they danced with one man after another, and the men came 
and went, and the stories about them were various. But there 
was only this one story about Ann : she was engaged to Harry 
Foker; she never was to think about anybody else. It was not 
a very amusing story. 

Well, the instant Foker awoke on the day after Lady Claver- 
ing’s dinner, there was Blanche’s image glaring upon him with 
its clear gray eyes, and winning smile. There was her tune 
ringing in his ears, “ Yet round about the spot, ofttimes I hover, 
ofttimes I hover,” which poor Foker began piteously to hum, 
as he sat up in his bed under the crimson silken coverlet. Op- 
posite him was a French print of a Turkish lady and her Greek 


PENDENNIS. 


399 


lover, surprised by a venerable Ottoman, the lady’s husband ; 
on the other wall, was a French print of a gentleman and lady, 
riding and kissing each other at the full gallop ; all around the 
chaste bedroom were more French prints, either portraits of 
gauzy nymphs of the Opera or lovely illustrations of the novels ; 
or mayhap, an English chef-d’oeuvre or two, in which Miss 
Pinckney of T. R. E. O. would be represented in tight panta- 
loons in her favorite page part ; or Miss Rougemont as Venus ; 
their value enhanced by the signatures of these ladies, Maria 
Pinckney, or Frederica Rougemont, inscribed underneath the 
prints in an exquisite fac-simile. Such were the pictures in 
which honest Harry delighted. He was no worse than many 
of his neighbors : he was an idle jovial kindly fast man about 
town ; and if his rooms were rather profusely decorated with 
works of French art, so that simple Lady Agnes, his mamma, 
on entering the apartments where her darling sat enveloped in 
fragrant clouds of Latakia, was often bewildered by the novel- 
ties which she beheld there, why, it must be remembered, that 
he was richer than most young men, and could better afford to 
gratify his taste. 

A letter from Miss Pinckney, written in a very degage style 
of spelling and handwriting, scrawling freely over the filigree 
paper, and. commencing by calling Mr. Harry her dear Hokey- 
pokey-fokey, lay on his bed-table by his side amidst keys, 
sovereigns, cigar-cases, and a bit of verbena, which Miss Amory 
had given him, and reminding him of the arrival of the day 
when he was “ to stand that dinner at the Elefant and Castle, 
at Richmond, which he had promised ; ” a card for a private 
box at Miss Rougemont’s approaching benefit, a bundle of 
tickets for “ Ben Budgeon’s night, the North Lancashire Pip- 
pin, at Martin Faunce’s, the Three-cornered Hat, in St. Mar- 
tin’s Lane ; where Conkey Sam, Dick the Nailor, the Dead- 
man (the Worcestershire Nobber), would put on the gloves, 
and the lovers of the good old British sport were invited to 
attend ” — these and sundry other memoirs of Mr. Foker’s pur- 
suits and pleasures lay on the table by his side when he awoke. 

Ah ! how faint all these pleasures seemed now ! What did 
he care for Conkey Sam or the Worcestershire Nobber? 
What for the French prints ogling him from all sides of the 
room ; those regular stunning slap-up out-and-outers ? And 
Pinckney spelling bad and calling him Hokey-fokey, confound 
her impudence ! The idea of being engaged to a dinner at the 
Elephant and Castle at Richmond with that old woman, (who 
was seven-and-thirty years old, if she was a day,) filled his mind 


400 


PENDENNIS . 


with dreary disgust now, instead of that pleasure which he had 
only yesterday expected to find from the entertainment. 

When his fond mamma beheld her boy that morning, she 
remarked on the pallor of his cheek, and the general gloom of 
his aspect. “ Why do you go on playing billiards at that wicked 
Spratt’s ? ” Lady Agnes asked. “ My dearest child, those 
billiards will kill you, I’m sure they will.” 

“ It isn’t the billiards,” Harry said, gloomily. 

“ Then it’s the dreadful Back Kitchen,” said the Lady Ag- 
nes. “ I’ve often thought, d’you know, Harry, of writing to the 
landlady, and begging that she would have the kindness to put 
only very little wine in the negus which you take, and see that 
you have your shawl on before you get into your brougham.” 

“ Do, ma’am. Mrs. Cutts is a most kind motherly woman,” 
Harry said. “ But it isn’t the Back Kitchen, neither,” he 
added, with a ghastly sigh. 

As Lady Agnes never denied her son anything, and fell into 
all his ways with the fondest acquiescence, she was rewarded 
by a perfect confidence on young Harry’s part, who never 
thought to disguise from her a knowledge of the haunts which 
he frequented ; and, on the contrary, brought her home choice 
ancedotes from the clubs and billiard-rooms, which the simple 
lady relished, if she did not understand. “ My son goes to 
Spratt’s,” she would say to her confidential friends. “ All the 
young men go to Spratt’s after their balls. It is de rigueur, my 
dear ; and they play billiards as they used to play macao and 
hazard in Mr. Fox’s time. Yes, my dear father often told me 
that they sat up always until nine o’clock the next morning 
with Mr. Fox at Brooke’s, whom I remember at Drummington, 
when I was a little girl, in a buff waistcoat and black satin 
small-clothes. My brother Erith never played as a young man, 
nor sat up late — he had no health for it ; but my boy must do 
as everybody does, you know. Yes, and then he often goes to 
a place called the Back Kitchen, frequented by all the wits and 
authors, you know, whom one does not see in society, but whom 
it is a great privilege and pleasure for Harry to meet, and there 
he hears the questions of the day discussed ; and my dear 
father often said that it was our duty to encourage literature, 
and he had hoped to see the late Dr. Johnson at Drummington, 
only Dr. Johnson died. Yes, and Mr. Sheridan came over, 
and drank a great deal of wine — everybody drank a great deal 
of wine in those days — and papa’s wine-merchant’s bill was ten 
times as much as Erith’s is, who gets it as he wants it from 
Fortnum and Mason’s, and doesn’t keep any stock at all.” 


PEND ENNIS. 


401 


“ That was an uncommon good dinner we had yesterday, 
ma’am,” the artful Harry broke out. “ Their clear soup’s 
better than ours, Moufflet will put too much tarragon into 
everything. The supreme de volaille was very good — uncom- 
mon, and the sweets were better than Moufflet’s sweets. Did 
you taste the plombiere, ma’am,” and the maraschino jelly? 
Stunningly good that maraschino jelly ! ” 

Lady Agnes expressed her agreement in these, as in almost 
all other sentiments of her son, who continued the artful con- 
versation, saying, 

“ Very handsome house that of the Claverings. Furniture, 

I should say, got up regardless of expense. Magnificent dis 
play of plate, ma’am.” The lady assented to all these proposi- 
tions. 

“Very nice people the Claverings.” 

“ Hm ! ” said Lady Agnes. 

“ I know what you mean. Lady C. ain’t distangy exactly, 
but she is very good-natured.” 

“ O, very ! ” mamma said, who was herself one of the most 
good-natured of women. 

“ And Sir Francis, he don’t talk much before ladies ; but 
after dinner he comes out uncommon strong, ma’am — a highly 
agreeable well-informed man. When will you ask them to din- 
ner ? Look out for an early day, ma’am ; ” and looking into 
Lady Agnes’s pocket-book, he chose a day only a fortnight 
hence (an age that fortnight seemed to the young gentleman), 
when the Claverings were to be invited to Grosvenor Street. 

The obedient Lady Agnes wrote the required invitation. 
She was accustomed to do so without consulting her husband, 
who had his own society and habits, and who left his wife to 
see her own friends alone. Harry looked at the card : but 
there was an omission in the invitation which did not please 
him. 

“ You have not asked Miss Whatdyecallum — Miss Emery, 
Lady Clavering’s daughter.” 

“ O that little creature ! ” Lady Agnes cried. “ No, I think 
not, Harry.” 

“We must ask Miss Amory,” Foker said. “ I — I want to , 
ask Pendennis ; and — and he’s very sweet upon her. Don’t you 
think she sings very well, ma’am ? ” 

“ I thought her rather forward, and didn’t listen to her sing- 
ing. She only sang at you and Mr. Pendennis, it seemed to 
me. But I will ask her if you wish, Harry,” and so Miss 
Amory’s name was written on the card with her mother’s. 

26 


402 


PENDENNIS. 


This piece of diplomacy being triumphantly executed, Harry 
embraced his fond parent with the utmost affection, and re- 
tired to his own apartments, where he stretched himself on his 
ottoman, and lay brooding silently, sighing for the day which 
was to bring the fair Miss Amory under his paternal roof, and 
devising a hundred wild schemes for meeting her. 

On his return from making the grand tour 9 Mr. Faker, 
junior, had brought with him a polyglot valet, who took the 
place of Stoopid, and condescended to wait at dinner, attired 
in shirt fronts of worked muslin, with many gold studs and 
chains. This man, who was of no particular country, and 
spoke all languages indifferently ill, made himself useful to Mr. 
Harry in a variety of ways, — read all the artless youth’s cor- 
respondence, knew his favorite haunts and the addresses of his 
acquaintance, and officiated at the private dinners which the 
young gentleman gave. As Harry lay upon his sofa after his 
interview with his mamma, robed in a wonderful dressing-gown, 
and puffing his pipe in gloomy silence, Anatole, too, must have 
remarked that something affected his master’s spirits ; though 
he did not betray any ill-bred sympathy with Harry’s agitation 
of mind. When Harry began to dress himself in his out-of-door 
morning costume, he was very hard indeed to please, and par- 
ticularly severe and snappish about his toilet : he tried, and 
cursed, pantaloons of many different stripes, checks, and colors : 
all the boots were villanously varnished ; the shirts too “ loud ” 
in pattern. He scented his linen and person with peculiar 
richness this day ; and what must have been the valet’s 
astonishment, when, after some blushing and hesitation on 
Harry’s part, the young gentleman asked, “I say, Anatole, 
when I engaged you, didn’t you — hem — didn’t ''ou say that you 
could dress — hem — dress hair?” 

The valet said, “ Yes, he could.” 

“ Cherchy alors une paire de tongs, — et — curly moi un pew,” Mr. 
Foker said in an easy manner ; and the valet, wondering whe- 
ther his master was in love or was going masquerading, went in 
search of the articles, — first from the old butler who waited 
upon Mr. Foker, senior, on whose bald pate the tongs would 
have scarcely found a hundred hairs to seize, and finally of the 
lady who had the charge of the meek auburn fronts of the Lady 
Agnes. And the tongs being got, Monsieur Anatole twisted 
his young master’s locks until he had made Harry’s head as 
curly as a negro’s ; after which the youth dressed himself with 
the utmost care and splendor, and proceeded to sally out. 

“ At what dime sail I order de drag, sir, to be to Miss Ping* 


I 



MR. FOKER PREPARING TO CONQUER. 































• 



• 




■ S 1 

. 

- ‘ 

* 









































































■ 











PENDENNIS. 


403 


ney’s door, sir ? " the attendant whispered as his master was 
going forth. 

“ Confound her ! — Put the dinner off — I can’t go ! ” said 
Foker. “ No, hang it — I must go. Poyntz and Rougemont, 
and ever so many more, are coming. The drag at Pelham 
Corner ar six o’clock, Anatole.” 

The drag was not one of Mr. Foker’s own equipages, but 
was hired from a livery stable for festive purposes ; Foker, 
however, put his own carriage into requisition that morning, 
and for what purpose does the kind reader suppose ? Why to 
drive down to Lamb Court, Temple, taking Grosvenor Place 
by the way (which lies in the exact direction of the Temple 
from Grosvenor Street, as everybody knows), where he just had 
the pleasure of peeping upwards at Miss Amory’s pink window- 
curtains ; having achieved which satisfactory feat, he drove off 
to Pen’s chambers. Why did he want to see his dear friend 
Pen so much ? Why did he yearn and long after him ? and 
did it seem necessary to Foker’s very existence that he should 
see Pen that morning, having parted with him in perfect health 
on the night previous ? Pen had lived two years in London, 
and Foker had not paid half-a-dozen visits to his chambers. 
What sent him thither now in such a hurry ? 

What ? — If any young ladies read this page, I have only to 
inform them that when the same mishap befalls them, which 
now had for more than twelve hours befallen Harry Foker, 
people will grow interesting to them for whom they did not care 
sixpence on the day before ; as on the other hand persons of 
whom they fancied themselves fond will be found to have be- 
come insipid and disagreeable. Then your dearest Eliza or 
Maria of the other day, to whom you wrote letters and sent 
locks of hair yards long, will on a sudden be as indifferent to 
you as your stupidest relation ; whilst, on the contrary, about 
his relations you will begin to feel such a warm interest ! such 
a loving desire to ingratiate yourself with his mamma ! such 
a liking for that dear kind old man his father ! If He is in the 
habit of visiting at any house, what advances you will make in 
order to visit there too ! ' If He has a married sister, you will 
like to spend long mornings with her. You will fatigue your 
servant by sending notes to her, for which there will be the 
most pressing occasion, twice or thrice in a day, You will cry 
if your mamma objects to your going too often to see His 
family. The only one of them you will dislike, is perhaps his 
younger brother, who is at home for the holidays, and who will 
persist in staying in the room when you come to see your dear 


404 


PENDENNIS. 


new-found friend, his darling second sister. Something like 
this will happen to you, young ladies, or, at any rate, let us 
hope it may. Yes, you must go through the hot fits and the 
cold fits of that pretty fever. Your mothers, if they would 
acknowledge it, have passed through it before you were born, 
your dear papa being the object of the passion of course, — who 
could it be but he ? And as you suffer it, so will your brothers, 
in their way, — and after their kind. More selfish than you : 
more eager and headstrong than you : they will rush on their 
destiny when the doomed charmer makes her appearance. Or 
if they don’t, and you don’t, Heaven help you ! As the gambler 
said of his dice, to love and win is the best thing, to love and 
lose is the next best. Now, then, if you ask why Henry Foker, 
Esquire, was in such a hurry to see Arthur Pendennis, and felt 
such a sudden value and esteem for him, there is no difficulty 
in saying it was because Pen had become really valuable in Mr. 
Foker’s eyes : because if Pen was not the rose, he had yet been 
near that fragrant flower of love. Was not he in the habit of 
going to her house in London ? Did he not live near her in 
the country ? — know all about the enchantress ? What, I 
wonder, would Lady Ann Milton, Mr. Foker’s cousin and/zr- 
tendue, have said, if her ladyship had known all that was going 
on in the bosom of that funny little gentleman ? 

Alas ! when Foker reached Lamb Court, leaving his carriage 
for the admiration of the little clerks who were lounging in the 
archway that leads thence into Flag Court, which leads into 
Upper Temple Lane, Warrington was in the chambers but Pen 
was absent. Pen was gone to the printing office to see his 
proofs. “ Would Foker have a pipe, and should the laundress 
go to the Cock and get him some beer ? ” — Warrington asked, 
remarking with a pleased surprise the splendid toilet of this 
scented and shiny-booted young aristocrat ; but Foker had not 
the slightest wish for beer or tobacco : he had very important 
business : he rushed away to the “Pall Mall Gazette” office, 
still bent upon finding Pen. Pen had quitted that place. Foker 
wanted him that they might go together to call upon Lady 
Clavering. Foker went away disconsolate, and whiled away an 
hour or two vaguely at clubs ; and when it was time to pay a 
visit, he thought it would be but decent and polite to drive to 
Grosvenor Place and leave a card upon Lady Clavering. He 
had not the courage to ask to see her when the door was open ; 
he only delivered two cards, with Mr. Henry Foker engraved 
upon them, to Jeames, in a speechless agony. Jeames received 
the tickets, bowing his powdered head. The vanished doors 


PENDENNIS. 


405 

closed upon him. The beloved object was as far as ever from 
him, though so near. He thought he heard the tones of a 
piano and of a siren singing, coming from the drawing-room 
and sweeping over the balcony-shrubbery of geraniums. He 
would have liked to stop and listen, but it might not be. 
“ Drive to Tattersall’s,” he said to the groom, in a voice 
smothered with emotion, — “ And bring my pony round,” he 
added, as the man drove rapidly away. 

As good luck would have it, that splendid barouche of Lady 
Clavering’s which has been inadequately described in a former 
chapter, drove up to her ladyship’s door just as Foker mounted 
the pony which was in waiting for him. He bestrode the fiery 
animal and dodged about the Arch of the Green Park, keeping 
the carriage well in view, until he saw Lady Clavering enter, 
and with her — whose could be that angel form, but the enchan- 
tress’s clad in a sort of gossamer, with a pink bonnet and a 
light- blue parasol — but Miss Amory? 

The carriage took its fair owners to Madame Rigodon’s cap 
and lace shop, to Mrs. Wolsey’s Berlin worsted shop, — who 
knows to what other resorts of female commerce.? Then it 
went and took ices at Hunter’s, for Lady Clavering was some- 
what florid in her tastes and amusements, and not only liked to 
go abroad in the most showy carriage in London, but that the 
public should see her in it too. And so, in -a white bonnet with 
a yellow feather, she ate a large pink ice in the sunshine before 
Hunter’s door, till Foker on his pony, and the red jacket who 
accompanied him, were almost tired of dodging. 

Then at last she made her way into the Park, and the rapid 
Foker made his dash forward. What to do ? Just to get a 
nod of recognition from Miss Amory and her mother ; to cross 
them a half-dozen times in the drive ; to watch and ogle them 
from the other side of the ditch, where the horsemen assemble 
when the band plays in Kensington Gardens. What is the use 
of looking at a woman in a pink bonnet across a ditch ? What 
is the earthly good to be got out of a nod of the head ? Strange 
that men will be contented with such pleasures, or if not 
contented, at least that they will be so eager in seeking them. 
Not one word did Harry, he so fluent of conversation ordinarily, 
exchange with his charmer on that day. Mutely he beheld her 
return to her carriage, and drive away among rather ironical 
salutes from the young men in the Park. One said that the 
Indian widow was making the paternal rupees spin rapidly ; 
another said that she ought to have burned herself alive, and 
left the money to her daughter. This one asked who Clavering 


PEND ENNIS. 


406 

was? — and old Tom Eales, who knew everybody, and never 
missed a day in the Park on his gray cob, kindly said that 
Clavering had come into an estate over head and heels in mort- 
gage : that there were devilish ugly stories about him when he 
was a young man, and that it was reported of him that he had 
a share in a gambling-house, and had certainly shown the white 
feather in his regiment. “ He plays still ; he is in a hell every 
night almost,” Mr. Eales added. 

“ I should think so, since his marriage,” said a wag. 

“ He gives devilish good dinners,” said Foker, striking up 
for the honor of his host of yesterday. 

“I daresay, and I daresay he doesn’t ask Eales,” the 
wag said, “ I say, Eales, do you dine at Clavering’s — at the 
Begum’s ? ” 

“ I dine there ? ” said Mr. Eales, who would have dined 
with Beelzebub if sure of a good cook, and when he came 
away, would have painted his host blacker than fate had made 
him. 

“ You might, you know, although you do abuse him so,” 
continued the wag. “ They say it’s very pleasant. Clavering 
goes to sleep after dinner ; the Begum gets tipsy with cherry- 
brandy, and the young lady sings songs to the young gentlemen. 
She sings well, don’t she, Fo? ” 

“ Slap up,” said Fo. “ I tell you what Poyntz, she sings 
like a — what-d’ye-call-’um — you know what I mean — like a 
mermaid, you know, but that’s not their name.” 

“ I never heard a mermaid sing,” Mr. Poyntz, the wag, re- 
plied. “ Who ever heard a mermaid ? Eales, you are an old 
fellow, did you ? ” 

“ Don’t make a lark of me, hang it, Poyntz,” said Foker, 
turning red, and with tears almost in his eyes ; “ you know what 
I mean : it’s those what’s-his-names — in Homer, you know. I 
never said I was a good scholar.” 

“ And nobody ever said it of you, my boy,” Mr. Poyntz re- 
marked, and Foker, striking spurs into his pony, cantered away 
down Rotten Row, his mind agitated with various emotions, 
ambitions, mortifications. He was sorry that he had not been 
good at his books in early life, that he might have cut out all 
those chaps who were about her, and who talked the languages, 
and wrote poetry, and painted pictures in her album, and — and 
that. — “ What am I,” thought little Foker, “ compared to her ? 
She’s all soul, she is, and can write poetry or compose music, as 
easy as I could drink a glass of beer. Beer ? — damme, that’s 
all I’m fit for, is beer. I am a poor, ignorant little beggar, good 


PENDENNIS. 


407 

for nothing but Foker’s Entire. I misspent my youth, and used 
to get the chaps to do my exercises. And what’s the con- 
sequences now ? O, Harry Foker, what a confounded little fool 
you have been ! ” 

As he made this dreary soliloquy, he had cantered out of 
Rotten Row into the Park, and there was on the point of riding 
down a large old roomy family carriage, of which he took no 
heed, when a cheery voice cried out, “ Harry, Harry ! ” and 
looking up, he beheld his aunt, the Lady Rosherville, and two 
of her daughters, of whom the one who spoke was Harry’s 
betrothed, the Lady Ann. 

He started back with a pale, scared look, as a truth, about 
which he had not thought during the whole day, came across 
him. There was his fate, there, in the back seat of • that 
carriage ! 

“What is the matter, Harry? why are you so pale? You 
have been raking and smoking too much, you wicked boy,” said 
Lady Ann. 

Foker said, “ How do, aunt,” “ How do, Ann,” in a perturbed 
manner — muttered something about a pressing engagement, — 
indeed he saw by the Park clock that he must have been keep- 
ing his party in the drag waiting for nearly an hour — and waved 
a good-by. The little man and the little pony were out of 
sight in an instant — the great carriage rolled away. Nobody 
inside was very much interested about his coming or going ; the 
Countess being occupied with her spaniel, the Lady Lucy's 
thoughts and eyes being turned upon a volume of sermons, and 
those of Lady Ann upon a new novel, which the sisters had just 
procured from the library. 


CHAPTER XL. 

CARRIES THE READER BOTH TO RICHMOND AND GREENWICH. 

Poor Foker found the dinner at Richmond to be the most 
dreary entertainment upon which ever mortal man wasted his 
guineas. “ I wonder how the deuce I could ever have liked 
these people,” he thought in his own mind. “ Why, I can see 
the crow’s-feet under Rougemont’s eyes, and the paint on hei 
cheeks is laid on as thick as Clown’s in a pantomime ! The 


PENDENNIS. 


408 

way in which that Pinckney talks slang, is quite disgusting. 1 
hate chaff in a woman. And old Colchicum ! that old Col, 
coming down here in his brougham, with his coronet on it, and 
sitting bodkin between Mademoiselle Coralie and her mother ! 
It’s too bad. An English peer, and a horse-rider of Franconi’s ! 
— It won’t do ; by Jove, it won’t do. I ain’t proud ; but it will 
not do ! ” 

“ Twopence-halfpenny for your thoughts, Fokey ! ” cried out 
Miss Rougemont, taking her cigar from her truly vermilion lips, 
as she beheld the young fellow lost in thought, seated at the 
head of his table, amidst melting ices, and cut pine-apples, and 
bottles full and empty, and cigar-ashes scattered on fruit, and 
the ruins of a dessert which had no pleasure for him. 

“ Does Foker ever think ? ” drawled out Mr Poyntz. “ Foker, 
here is a considerable sum of money offered by a fair capitalist 
at this end of the table for the present emanations of your 
valuable and acute intellect, old boy ! ” 

“ What the deuce is that Poyntz a talking about ? ” Miss 
Pinckney asked of her neighbor. “ I hate him. He’s a drawlin’, 
sneerin’ beast.” 

“What a droll of a little man is that little Fokare, my lor,” 
Mademoiselle Coralie said, in her own language, and with the 
rich twang of that sunny Gascony in which her swarthy cheeks 
and bright black eyes had got their fire. “ What a droll of a 
man ! He does not look to have twenty years.” 

“ I wish I were of his age,” said the venerable Colchicum, 
with a sigh, as he inclined his purple face towards a large goblet 
of claret. 

“ Cte Jeunesse. Penh ! je nten fiche ,” said Madame Brack, 
Coralie’s mamma, taking a great pinch out of Lord Colchicum’s 
delicate gold snuff-box. “ Je n'aime que les hommes faits, moi. 
Comme milor. Coralie! n'est-ce pas quetu ?i'aimes que les hommes 
faits , ma bichette ? ” 

My lord said, with a grin, “ You flatter me, Madame 
Brack.” 

“ Taisez-vous , maman ; vous n'etes qu'unebetef Coralie cried, 
with a shrug of her robust shoulders ; upon which, my lord said 
that she did not flatter at any rate ; and pocketed his snuff-box, 
not desirous that Madame Brack’s dubious fingers should plunge 
too frequently into his Mackabaw. 

There is no need to give a prolonged detail of the animated 
conversation which ensued during the rest of the banquet ; a 
conversation which would not much edify the reader. And it 
is scarcely necessary to say, that all ladies of the corps de danst 


PENDENNIS. 


409 


are not like Miss Pinckney, any more than that all peers resemble 
that illustrious member of their order, the late lamented Viscount 
Colchicum. 

Mr. Foker drove his lovely guests home to Brompton in the 
drag that night ; but he was quite thoughtful and gloomy during 
the whole of the little journey from Richmond ; neither listen- 
ing to the jokes of the friends behind him and on the box by his 
side, nor enlivening them, as was his wont, by his own facetious 
sallies. And when the ladies whom he had conveyed alighted 
at the door of their house, and asked their accomplished coach- 
man whether he would not step in and take something to drink, 
he declined with so melancholy an air, that they supposed that 
the Governor and he had had a difference, or that some calamity 
had befallen him ; and he did not tell these people what the 
cause of his grief was, but left Mesdames Rougemont and Pinck- 
ney, unheeding the cries of the latter, who hung over her bal- 
cony like Jezebel, and called out to him to ask him to give 
another party soon. 

He sent the drag home under the guidance of one of the 
grooms, and went on foot himself ; his hands in his pockets, 
plunged in thought. The stars and moon shining tranquilly 
over head, looked down upon Mr. Foker that night, as he in 
his turn sentimentally regarded them. And he went and gazed 
upwards at the house in Grosvenor Place, and at the windows 
which he supposed to be those of the beloved object ; and he 
moaned and he sighed in a way piteous and surprising to 
witness, which Policeman X did, who informed Sir Francis 
Clavering’s people, as they took the refreshment of beer on the 
coach-box at the neighboring public-house, after bringing home 
their lady from the French play, that there had been another 
chap hanging about the premises that evening — a little chap 
dressed like a swell. 

And now, with that perspicuity and ingenuity and enterprise 
which only belongs to a certain passion, Mr. Foker began to 
dodge Miss Amory to London, and to appear wherever he 
could meet her. If Lady Clavering went to the French play, 
where her ladyship had a box, Mr. Foker, whose knowledge of 
the language, as we have heard, was not conspicuous, appeared 
in a stall. He found out where her engagements were (it is 
possible that Anatole, his man, was acquainted with Sir Francis 
Clavering’s gentleman, and so got a sight of her ladyship’s en- 
gagement book), and at many of these evening parties Mr. 
Foker made his appearance — to the surprise of the world, and 
of his mother especially, whom he ordered to apply for cards to 


4io 


PEND ENNIS. 


these parties, for which until now he had shown a supreme 
contempt. He told the pleased and unsuspicious lady that he 
went to parties because it was right for him to see the world : 
he told her that he went to the French play because he wanted 
to perfect himself in the language, and there was no such 
good lesson as a comedy or vaudeville ; — and when one night 
the astonished Lady Agnes saw him stand up and dance, and 
complimented him upon his elegance and activity, the men- 
dacious little rogue asserted that he had learned to dance in 
Paris, whereas Anatole knew that his young master used to go 
off privily to an academy in Brewer Street, and study there for 
some hours in the morning. The casino of our modern days 
was not invented, or was in its infancy as yet ; and gentlemen 
of Mr. Foker’s time had not the facilities of acquiring the 
science of dancing which are enjoyed by our present youth. 

Old Pendennis seldom missed going to church. He con- 
sidered it to be his duty as a gentleman to patronize the 
institution of public worship, and that it was a correct thing to 
be seen at church of a Sunday. One day, it chanced that he 
and Arthur went thither together ; the latter, who was now in 
high favor, had been to breakfast with his uncle, from whose 
lodging they walked across the Park to a church not far from 
Belgrave Square. There was a charity sermon at Saint James’s, 
as the Major knew by the bills posted on the pillars of his 
parish church, which probably caused him, for he was a thrifty 
man, to forsake it for that day : besides, he had other views for 
himself and Pen. “We will go to church, sir, across the Park; 
and then, begad, we will go to the Claverings’ house, and ask 
them for lunch in a friendly way. Lady Clavering likes to be 
asked for lunch, and is uncommonly kind, and monstrous 
hospitable.” 

“I met them at dinner last week, at Lady Agnes Foker’s, 
sir,” Pen said, “ and the Begum was very kind indeed. So she 
was in the country : so she is everywhere. But I share your 
opinion about Miss Amory ; one of your opinions, that is, uncle, 
for you were changing, the last time we spoke about her.” 

“ And what do you think of her now ? ” the elder said. 

“ I think her the most confounded little flirt in London,” 
Pen answered, laughing. “ She made a tremendous assault 
upon Harry Foker, who sat next to her ; and to whom she gave 
all the talk, though I took her down.” 

“ Bah ! Henry Foker is engaged to his cousin, all the world 
knows it : not a bad coup of Lady Rosherville’s, that. I should 
say, that the young man at his father’s death, and old Mr. 


PENDEMNIS. 


411 

Foker’s life’s devilish bad : you know he had a fit, at Arthur’s 
last year ; I should say, that young Foker won’t have less than 
fourteen thousand a year from the brewery, besides Logwood 
and the Norfolk property, I’ve no pride about me, Pen. I 
like a man of birth certainly, but dammy, I like a brewery 
which brings in a man fourteen thousand a year ; hey, Pen ? 
Ha, ha, that’s the sort of man for me. And I recommend you, 
now that you are lanced in the world, to stick to fellows of that 
sort ; to fellows who have a stake in the country, begad.” 

“ Foker sticks to me, sir,” Arthur answered. “ He has 
been at our chambers several times lately. He has asked me 
to dinner. We are almost as great friends as we used to be in 
our youth : and his talk is about Blanche Amory from morning 
till night. I’m sure he’s sweet upon her.” 

“ I’m sure he is engaged to his cousin, and that they will 
keep the young man to his bargain,” said the Major. “ The 
marriages in these families are affairs of state. Lady Agnes 
was made to marry old Foker by the late Lord, although she 
was notoriously partial to her cousin who was killed at Albuera 
afterwards, and who saved her life out of the lake at Drumming- 
ton. I remember Lady Agnes, sir, an exceedingly fine woman. 
But what did she do ? — of course she married her father’s man. 
Why, Mr. Foker sat for Drummington till the Reform Bill, 
and paid dev’lish well for his seat, too. And you may depend 
upon this, sir, that Foker senior, who is a parvenu, and loves 
a great man, as all parvenus do, has ambitious views for his 
son as well as himself, and that your friend Harry must do as 
his father bids him. Lord bless you ! I’ve known a hundred 
cases of love in young men and women : hey, Master Arthur, 
do you take me ? They kick, sir, they resist, they make a deuce 
of a riot and that sort of thing, but they end by listening to 
reason, begad.” 

“ Blanche is a dangerous girl, sir,” Pen said. “ I was smit- 
ten with her myself once, and very far gone, too,” he added : 
“but that is years ago.” 

“ Were you ? How far did it go ? Did she return it ? ” 
asked the Major, looking hard at Pen. 

Pen, with a laugh, said “ that at one time he did think he 
was pretty well in Miss Amory’s good graces. But my mother 
did not like her, and the affair went off.” Pen did not think it 
fit to tell his uncle all the particulars of that courtship which 
had passed between himself and the young lady. 

“ A man might go farther and fare worse, Arthur,” the Major 
said, still looking queerly at his nephew. 


412 


PEND ENNIS. 


“ Her birth, sir ; her father was the mate of a ship, they 
say : and she has not money enough,” objected Pen, in a 
dandyfied manner. “ What’s ten thousand pound and a girl 
bred up like her ? ” 

“ You use my own words, and it is all very well. But, I tell 
you in confidence, Pen, — in strict honor, mind, — that it’s my 
belief she has a devilish deal more than ten thousand pound : 
and from what I saw of her the other day, and — and have 
heard of her — I should say she was a devilish accomplished, 
clever girl : and would make a good wife with a sensible 
husband.” 

“ How do you know about her money ? ” Pen asked, smiling. 
“ You seem to have information about everybody, and to know 
about all the town.” 

“ I do know a few things, sir, and I don’t tell all I know. 
Mark that,” the uncle replied. “ And as for that charming 
Miss Amory, — for charming, begad ! she is, — if I saw her Mrs. 
Arthur Pendennis, I should neither be sorry nor surprised, 
begad ! and if you object to ten thousand pound, what would 
you say, sir, to thirty, or forty, or fifty ? ” and the Major looked 
still more knowingly, and still harder at Pen. 

“ Well, sir,” he said, to his godfather and namesake, “ make 
her Mrs. Arthur Pendennis. You can do it as well as I.” 

“ Psha ! you are laughing at me, sir,” the other replied, 
rather peevishly, “ and you ought not to laugh so near a church 
gate. Here we are at St. Benedict’s. They say Mr. Oriel is a 
beautiful preacher.” 

Indeed the bells were tolling, the people were trooping into 
the handsome church, the carriages of the inhabitants of the 
lordly quarter poured forth their pretty loads of devotees, in 
whose company Pen and his uncle, ending their edifying conver- 
sation, entered the fane. I do not know whether other people 
carry their worldly affairs to the church door. Arthur, who, 
from habitual reverence and feeling, was always more than re- 
spectful in a place of worship, thought of the incongruity of 
their talk, perhaps ; whilst the old gentleman at his side was 
utterly unconscious of any such contrast. His hat was brushed : 
his wig was trim : his neck-cloth was perfectly tied. He looked 
at every soul in the congregation, it is true : the bald heads and 
the bonnets, the flowers and the feathers : but so demurely, that 
he hardly lifted up his eyes from his book — from his book which 
he could not read without glasses. As for Pen’s gravity, it was 
sorely put to the test when, upon looking by chance towards 
the seats where the servants were collected, he spied out, by 


PENDENNIS 


413 


the side of a demure gentleman in plush, Henry Foker, Esquire, 
who had discovered this place of devotion. Following the 
direction of Harry’s eye, which strayed a good deal from his 
book, Pen found that it alighted upon a yellow bonnet and a 
pink one : and that these bonnets were on the heads of 
Lady Clavering and Blanche Amory. If Pen’s uncle is not the 
only man who has talked about his worldly affairs up to the 
church door, is poor Harry Foker the only one who has brought 
his worldly love into the aisle ? 

When the congregation issued forth at the conclusion of the 
service, Foker was out amongst the first, but Pen came up with 
him presently, as he was hankering about the entrance, which 
he was unwilling to leave, until my lady’s barouche, with the 
bewigged coachman, had borne away its mistress and her 
daughter from their devotions. 

When the two ladies came out, they found together the 
Pendennises, uncle and nephew, and Harry Foker, Esquire, 
sucking the crook of his. stick, standing there in the sunshine. 
To see and to ask to eat were simultaneous with the good- 
natured Begum, and she invited the three gentlemen to lunch- 
eon straightway. 

Blanche, too, was particularly gracious. “ O ! do come,” 
she said to Arthur, “ if you are not too great a man. I want so 
to talk to you about — but we mustn’t say what, here, you know. 
What would Mr. Oriel say? ” And the young devotee jumped 
into the carriage after her mamma. — “ I’ve read every word of 
it. It’s adorable ,” she added, still addressing herself to Pen. 

“ I know ivho is,” said Mr. Arthur, making rather a pert 
bow. 

“What’s the row about?” asked Mr. Foker, rather puzzled. 

“ I suppose Miss Clavering means ‘Walter Lorraine,’ ” said 
the Major, looking knowing, and nodding at Pen. 

“ I suppose so, sir. There was a famous review in the Pall 
Mall ’ this morning. It was Warrington’s doing though, and I 
must not be too proud.” 

“ A review in Pall Mall ? — Walter Lorraine ? What the 
doose do you mean ? ” Foker asked. “ Walter Lorraine died of 
the measles, poor little beggar, when we were at Grey Friars. 
I remember his mother coming up.” 

“ You are not a literary man, Foker,” Pen said, laughing, 
and hooking his arm into his friend’s. “You must know I have 
been writing a novel, and some of the papers have spoken very 
well of it. Perhaps you don’t read the Sunday papers ? ” 

“ I read ‘ Bell’s Life ’ regular, old boy,” Mr. Foker answered .• 


PENDENNIS. 


414 

at which Pen laughed again, and the three gentlemen proceed- 
ed in great good-humor to Lady Clavering’s house. 

The subject of the novel was resumed after luncheon by 
Miss Amory, who indeed loved poets and men of letters if she 
loved anything, and was sincerely an artist in feeling. “ Some 
of the passages in the book made me cry, positively they did,” 
she said. 

Pen said, with some fatuity, “ I am happy to think I have a 
part of vos larmes , Miss Blanche ’’—And the Major (who had 
not read more than six pages of Pen’s book) put on his sancti- 
fied look, saying, “ Yes, there are some passages quite affect- 
ing, mons’ous affecting, and,” — “ O, if it makes you cry,” — 
Lady Amory declared she would not read it, “ that she wouldn’t.” 

“ Don’t, mamma,” Blanche said, with a French shrug of her 
shoulders ; and then she fell into a rhapsody about the book, 
about the snatches of poetry interspersed in it, about the two 
heroines, Leonora and Neaera ; about the two heroes, Walter 
Lorraine and his rival the young Duke — “ and what good com- 
pany you introduce us to,” said the young lady, archly, “ quel 
ton ! How much of your life have you passed at court, and are 
you a prime minister’s son, Mr. Arthur ? ” 

Pen began to laugh — “ It is as cheap for a novelist to create 
a Duke as to make a Baronet,” he said. “ Shall I tell you a 
secret, Miss Amory ? I promoted all my characters at the re- 
quest of the publisher. The young Duke was only a young 
Baron when the novel was first written ; his false friend, the 
Viscount, was a simple commoner, and so on with all the char- 
acters of the story.” 

“ What a wicked, satirical, pert young man you have be- 
come ! Comme vous voila forme /” said the young lady. “ How 
different from Arthur Pendennis of the country ! Ah ! I 
think I like Arthur Pendennis of the country best, though ! ” 
and she gave him the full benefit of her eyes, — both of the fond 
appealing glance into his own, and of the modest look down- 
wards towards the carpet, which showed off her dark eyelids and 
long fringed lashes. 

Pen of course protested that he had not changed in the 
least, to which the young lady replied by a tender sigh ; and 
thinking that she had done quite enough to make Arthur happy 
or miserable (as the case might be), she proceeded to cajole 
his companion, Mr. Plarry Foker, who during the literary con- 
versation had sat silently imbibing the head of his cane, and 
wishing he was a clever chap like that Pen. 

If the Major thought that telling Miss Amory of Mr 


PENDENNIS . 


4*5 

Foker’s engagement to his cousin, Lady Ann Milton (which infor- 
mation the old gentleman neatly conveyed to the girl as he sat 
by her side at luncheon below stairs), — if, we say, the Major 
thought that the knowledge of this fact would prevent Blanche 
from paying any further attention to the young heir of Foker’s 
Entire, he was entirely mistaken. She became only the more 
gracious to Foker : she praised him, and everything belonging 
to him ; she praised his mamma ; she praised the pony which 
he rode in the Park ; she praised the lovely breloques or gim- 
cracks which the young gentleman wore at his watch-chain, and 
that dear little darling of a cane, and those dear little delicious 
monkeys’ heads with ruby eyes, which ornamented Harry’s shirt, 
and formed the buttons of his waistcoat. And then, having 
praised and coaxed the weak youth until he blushed and tingled 
with pleasure, and until Pen thought she really had gone quite 
far enough, she took another theme. 

“ I am afraid Mr. Foker is a very sad young man,” she 
said, turning round to Pen. 

“ He does not look so,” Pen answered with a sneer. 

“ I mean we have heard sad stories about him. Haven’t 
we, mamma ? What was Mr. Poyntz saying here, the other day, 
about the party at Richmond ? O you naughty creature ! ” 
But here, seeing that Harry’s countenance assumed a great ex- 
pression of alarm, while Pen’s wore a look of amusement, she 
turned to the latter and said, “ I believe you are just as bad : 
I believe you would have liked to have been there, — would’nt 
you ? I know you would : yes — and so should I.” 

“ Lor, Blanche ! ” mamma cried. 

“ Well, I would. I never saw an actress in my life. I would 
give anything to know one ; for I adore talent. And I adore 
Richmond, that I do ; and I adore Greenwich, and I say, I 
should like to go there.” 

“ Why should not we three bachelors,” the Major here 
broke out, gallantly, and to his nephew’s special surprise, “ beg 
these ladies to honor us with their company at Greenwich ? Is 
Lady Clavering to go on for ever being hospitable to us, and 
may we make no return ? Speak for yourselves, young men, — 
eh, begad ! Here is my nephew, with his pockets full of money 
— his pockets /ull, begad ! and Mr. Plenry Foker, who, as I 
have heard say, is pretty well to do in the world, — how is your 
lovely cousin, Lady Ann, Mr. Foker? — here are these two 
j T oung ones, — and they allow an old fellow like me to speak. 
Lady Clavering, will you do me the favor to be my guest ? and 
Miss Blanche shall be Arthur’s if she will be so. good.” 


416 


PENDENNIS. 


“ Oh delightful ! ” cried Blanche. 

“ I like a bit of fun too,” said Lady Clavering ; and we 
will take some day when Sir Francis — ” 

“When Sir Francis dines out, — yes, Mamma,” the daugh- 
ter said, “ it will be charming.” 

And a charming day it was. The dinner was ordered at 
Greenwich, and Foker, though he did not invite Miss Amory, 
had some delicious opportunities of conversation with her dur- 
ing the repast, and afterwards on the balcony of their room at 
the hotel, and again during the drive home in her ladyship’s 
barouche. Pen came down with his uncle, in Sir Hugh Trump- 
ington’s brougham, which the Major borrowed for the occa- 
sion. “ I am an old soldier, begad,” he said, “ and I learned 
in early life to make myself comfortable.” 

And, being an old soldier, he allowed the two young men 
to pay for the dinner between them, and all the way home in 
the brougham he rallied Pen about Miss Amory’s evident par- 
tiality for him : praised her good looks, spirits, and wit : and 
again told Pen, in the strictest confidence, that she would be a 
devilish deal richer than people thought. 


CHAPTER XLI. 

CONTAINS A NOVEL INCIDENT. 

Some account has been given, in a former part of this story, 
how Mr. Pen, during his residence at home, after his defeat at 
Oxbridge, had occupied himself with various literary composi- 
tions, and amongst other works, had written the greater part of 
a novel. This book, written under the influence of his youth- 
ful embarrassments, amatory and pecuniary, was of a very fierce, 
gloomy, and passionate sort, — the Byronic despair, the Wer- 
therian despondency, the mocking bitterness of Mephistopheles 
of Faust, were all reproduced and developed in the character 
of the hero ; for our youth had just been learning the German 
language, and imitated, as almost all clever lads 4 do, his favorite 
poets and writers. Passages in the volumes once so loved, and 
now read so seldom, still bear the mark of the pencil with 
which he noted them in those days. Tears fell upon the leaf 
of the book, perhaps, or blistered the pages of his manuscript, 
as the passionate young man dashed his thoughts down. If he 


PENDENNIS. 


417 


took up the book afterwards, he had no ability or wish to sprin- 
kle the leaves with that early dew of former times : his pencil 
was no longer eager to score its marks of approval : but as he 
looked over the pages of his manuscript, he remembered what 
had been the overflowing feelings which had caused him to 
blot it, and the pain which had inspired the line. If the secret 
history of books could be written, and the author’s private 
thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how 
many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales 
excite the reader ! Many a bitter smile passed over Pen’s face 
as he read his novel, and recalled the time and feelings which 
gave it birth. How pompous some of the grand passages ap- 
peared ; and how weak others were in which he thought he 
had expressed his full heart ! This page was imitated from a 
then favorite author, as he could now clearly see and confess, 
though he had believed himself to be writing originally then. 
As he mused over certain lines he recollected the place and 
hour where he wrote them : the ghost of the dead feeling came 
back as he mused, and he blushed to review the faint image. 
And what meant those blots on the page ? As you come in 
the desert to ground where camels’ hoofs are marked in the 
clay, and traces of withered herbage are yet visible, you know 
that water was there once : so the place in Pen’s mind was no 
longer green, and the fons lacrymarum was dried up. 

He used this simile one morning to Warrington, as the 
latter sat over his pipe and book, and Pen, with much gesticu- 
lation, according to his wont when excited, and with a bitter 
laugh, thumped his manuscript down on the table, making the 
tea-things rattle, and the blue milk dance in the jug. On the 
previous night he had taken the manuscript out of a long- 
neglected chest, containing old shooting-jackets, old Oxbridge 
scribbling-books, his old surplice, and battered cap and gown, 
and other memorials of youth, school, and home. He read 
in the volume in bed until he fell asleep, for the commencement 
of the tale was somewhat dull, and he had come home tired from 
a London evening party. 

“ By Jove ! ” said Pen, thumping down his papers, “ when I 
think that these were written only a very few years ago, I am 
ashamed of my memory. I wrote this when I believed myself 
to be eternally in love with that little coquette, Miss Amory. 
I used to carry down verses to her, and put them into the hol- 
low of a tree, and dedicate them ‘ Amori.’ ” 

“That was a sweet little play upon words,” Warrington re- 
marked, with a puff. “ Amory — Amori. It showed profound 

2 7 


PEND ENNIS. 


418 

scholarship. Let us hear a bit of the rubbish/’ And he 
stretched over from his easy-chair, and caught hold of Pen’s 
manuscript with the fire-tongs, which he was just using in order 
to put a coal into his pipe. Thus, in possession of the volume, 
he began to read out from the “ Leaves from the Life-book of 
Walter Lorraine.” 

“‘False as thou art beautiful ! heartless as thou art fair! 
mockery of Passion ! ’ Walter cried, addressing Leonora ; 
‘ what evil spirit hath sent thee to torture me so ? O Leo- 
nora * * * ”’ 

“ Cut that part out,” cried Pen, making a dash at the book, 
which, however, his comrade would not release. “ Well ! don’t 
read it out at any rate. That’s about my other flame, my first 
— Lady Mirabel that is now. I saw her last night at Lady 
Whiston’s. She asked me to a party at her house, and said 
that, as old friends, we ought to meet oftener. She has been 
seeing me any time these two years in town, and never 
thought of inviting me before ; but seing Wenham talking to 
me, and Monsieur Dubois, the French literary man, who had a 
dozen orders on, and might have passed for a Marshal of France, 
she condescended to invite me. The Claverings are to be 
there on the same evening. Won’t it be exciting to meet one’s 
two flames at the same table ? ” 

“Two flames! — two heaps of burnt-out cinders,” Warring- 
ton said. “ Are both the beauties in this book ? ” 

“ Both, or something like them,” Pen said. “ Leonora, who 
marries the Duke, is the Fotheringay. I drew the Duke from 
Magnus Charters, with whom I was at Oxford ; it’s a little like 
him ; and Miss Amory is Neasra. By gad, Warrington, I did 
love that first woman ! I thought of her as I walked home 
from Lady Whiston’s in the moonlight ; and the whole early 
scenes came back to me as if they had been yesterday. And 
when I got home, I pulled out the story which I wrote about 
her and the other three years ago : do you know, outrageous 
as it is, it has some good stuff in it ; and if Bungay won’t pub- 
lish it, I think Bacon will.” 

“That’s the way of poets,” said Warrington. “They fall 
in love, jilt, or are jilted ; they suffer and they cry out that they 
suffer more than any other mortals : and when they have ex- 
perienced feelings enough they note them down in a book, and 
take the book to market. All poets are humbugs, all literary 
men are humbugs ; directly a man begins to sell Bis feeling for 
money he’s a humbug. If a poet gets a pain in his side from 
too good a dinner, he bellows Ai, Ai, louder than Prometheus,” 


PENDENNIS . 


419 


“I suppose a poet has greater sensibility than another man/' 
said Pen, with some spirit. “ That is what makes him a poet. 

I suppose that he sees and feels more keenly : it is that which 
makes him speak of what he feels and sees. You speak 
eagerly enough in your leading articles when you espy a false 
argument in an opponent, or detect a quack in the House. 
Paley, who does not care for anything else in the world, will 
talk for an hour about a question of law. Give another the 
privilege which you take yourself, and the free use of his 
faculty, and let him be what nature has made him. Why should 
not a man sell his sentimental thoughts as well as you your 
political ideas, or Paley his legal knowledge ? Each alike 
is a matter of experience and practice. It is not money which % 
causes you to perceive a fallacy, or Paley to argue a point ; but 
a natural or acquired aptitude for that kind of truth ; and a poet 
sets down his thoughts and experiences upon paper as a pain- 
ter does a landscape or a face upon canvas, to the best of 
his ability, and according to his particular gift. If ever I think 
I have the stuff in me to write an epic, by Jove I will try. If I 
only feel that I am good enough to crack a joke or tell a story, 

I will do that.” 

“ Not a bad speech, young one,” Warrington said, “but 
that does not prevent all poets from being humbugs.” 

“ What — Homer, ^Eschylus, Shakspeare and all ? ” 

“Their names are not to be breathed in the same sentence 
with your pigmies,” Warrington said ; “ there are men and men, 
sir.” 

“ Well, Shakspeare was a man who wrote for money, just as 
you and I do,” Pen answered ; at which Warrington con- 
founded his impudence, and resumed his pipe and his man- 
uscript. 

There was not the slightest doubt then that this document 
contained a great deal of Pen’s personal experiences, and that 
“ Leaves from the Life-book of Walter Lorraine ” would 
never have been written but for Arthur Pendennis’s own private 
griefs, passions, and follies. As we have become acquainted 
with these in the earlier part of his biography, it will not be 
necessary to make large extracts from the novel of “ Walter 
Lorraine,” in which the young gentleman had depicted such of 
them as he thought were likely to interest the reader, or were 
suitable for the purposes of his story. 

Now, though he had kept it in his box for nearly half of the 
period during which, according to the Horatian maxim, a work 
of art ought "to lie ripening (a maxim, the truth of which may, 


420 


PENDENNIS. 


by the way, be questioned altogether), Mr. Pen had not buried 
his novel for this time, in order that the work might improve, 
but because he did not know where else to bestow it, or had no 
particular desire to see it. A man who thinks of putting away 
a composition for ten years before he shall give it to the world, 
or exercise his own maturer judgment upon it, had best be very 
sure of the original strength and durability of the work ; other- 
wise on withdrawing it from its crypt he may find that, like 
small wine, it has lost what flavor it once had, and is only taste- 
less when opened. There are works of all tastes and smacks, 
the small and the strong, those that improve by age, and those 
that won’t bear keeping at all, but are pleasant at the first 
draught, when they refresh and sparkle. 

Now Pen had never any notion, even in the time of his youth- 
ful inexperience and fervor of imagination, that the story he was 
writing was a masterpiece of composition, or that he was the 
equal of the great authors whom he admired : and when he 
now reviewed his little performance, he was keenly enough alive 
to its faults, and pretty modest regarding its merits. It was 
not very good, he thought ; but it was as good as most books 
of the kind that had the run of circulating libraries and the 
career of the season. He had critically examined more than one 
fashionable novel by the authors of the day then popular, and 
he thought that his intellect was as good as theirs, and that he 
could write the English language as well as those ladies or 
gentleman : and as he now ran over his early performance, he 
was pleased to find here and there passages exhibiting both fancy 
and vigor, and traits, if not of genius, of genuine passion and 
feeling. This, too, was Warrington’s verdict, when that severe 
critic, after half-an-hour’s perusal of the manuscript, and the 
consumption of a couple of pipes of tobacco, laid Pen’s book 
down, yawning portentously. “ I can’t read any more of that 
balderdash now,” he said ; “but it seems to me there is some 
good stuff in it, Pen, my boy. There’s a certain greenness and 
freshness in it which I like somehow. The bloom disappears 
off the face of poetry after you begin to shave. You can’t get 
up that naturalness and artless rosy tint in after days. Your 
cheeks are pale, and have got faded by exposure to evening- 
parties, and you are obliged to take curling-irons, and macassar, 
and the deuce-knows-what to your whiskers ; they curl ambrosi- 
ally, and you are very grand and genteel, and so forth ; but, 
ah ! Pen, the spring time was the best.” 

“ What the deuce have my whiskers to do with the subject 
in hand ? ” Pen said (who, perhaps, may have been nettled by 


PENDENNIS. 


421 


Warrington’s allusion to those ornaments, which, to say the 
truth, the young man coaxed, and curled, and oiled, and per- 
fumed, and petted, in rather an absurd manner). “ Do you 
think we can do anything with ‘Walter Lorraine ? ’ Shall .we 
take him to the publisher’s or make an auto-da-fe of him ? ” 

“I don’t see what is the good of incremation,” Warring- 
ton said, “ though I have a great mind to put him into the fire, 
to punish your atrocious humbug and hypocrisy. Shall I burn 
him indeed ? You have much too great a value for him to hurt 
a hair of his head.” 

“ Have I ? Here goes,” said Pen, and “ Walter Lorraine ” 
went off the table, and was flung on to the coals. But the fire 
having done its duty of boiling the young man’s breakfast- 
kettle, had given up work for the day, and had gone out, as Pen 
knew very well ; and Warrington, with a scornful smile, once 
more took up the manuscript with the tongs, from out of the 
harmless cinders. 

“ O, Pen, what a humbug you are ! ” Warrington said ; 
“ and, what is worst of all, sir, a clumsy humbug. I saw you 
look to see that the fire was out before you sent ‘ Walter Lor- 
raine ’behind the bars. No, we won’t burn him : we will carry 
him to the Egyptians, and sell him. We will exchange him 
away for money, yea, for silver and gold, and for beef and for 
liquors, and for tobacco and for raiment. This youth will fetch 
some price in the market ; for he is a comely lad, though not 
over strong ; but we will fatten him up, and give him the bath, 
and curl his hair, and we will sell him for a hundred piastres to 
Bacon or to Bungay. The rubbish is saleable enough, sir ; and 
my advice to you is this : the next time you go home for a holi- 
day, take * Walter Lorraine ’ in your carpet-bag — give him a 
more modern air, prune away, though sparingly, some of the 
green passages, and add a little comedy, and cheerfulness, and 
satire, and that sort of thing, and then we’ll take him to market, 
and sell him. The book is not a wonder of wonders, but it will 
do very well.” 

“ Do you think so, Warrington ? ” said Pen, delighted, for 
this was great praise from his cynical friend. 

“You silly young fool! I think it’s uncommonly clever,” 
Warrington said in a kind voice. “ So do you, sir.” And with 
the manuscript which he held in his hand he playfully struck Pen 
on the cheek. That part of Pen’s countenance turned as red 
as it had ever done in the earliest days of his blushes : he grasped 
the other’s hand and said, “ Thank you, Warrington,” with all 
his might ; and then he retired to his own room with his book, 


422 


PENDENNIS . 


and passed the greater part of the day upon his bed re-reading 
it and he did as Warrington had advised, and altered not a 
little, and added a great deal, until at length he had fashioned 
“ Walter Lorraine ” pretty much into the shape in which, as the 
respected novel-reader knows, it subsequently appeared. 

Whilst he was at work upon this performance, the good- 
natured Warrington artfully inspired the two gentlemen who 
“ read ” for Messrs. Bacon and Bungay with the greatest curn 
osity regarding “ Walter Lorraine,” and pointed out the peculiar 
merits of its distinguished author. It was at the period when 
the novel called “The Fashionable,” was in vogue among us; 
and Warrington did not fail to point out, as before, how Pen 
was a man of the very first fashion himself, and received at the 
houses of some of the greatest personages in the land. The 
simple and kind-hearted Percy Popjoy was brought to bear upon 
Mrs. Bungay, whom he informed that his friend Pendennis was 
occupied upon a work of the most exciting nature ; a work that 
the whole town would run after, full of wit, genius, satire, 
pathos, and every conceivable good quality. We have said be- 
fore, that Bungay knew no more about ndvels than he did about 
Hebrew or Algebra, and neither read nor understood any of 
the books which he published and paid for ; but he took his 
opinions from his professional advisers and from Mrs. B ; and, 
evidently with a view to a commercial transaction, asked Pen- 
dennis and Warrington to dinner again. 

Bacon, when he found that Bungay was about to treat, of 
course began to be anxious and curious, and desired to outbid 
his rival. Was anything settled between Mr. Pendennis and 
the odious house “over the way” about the new book? Mr. 
Hack, the confidential reader, was told to make inquiries, and 
see if anything was to be done ; and the result of the inquiries 
of that diplomatist was, that one morning, Bacon himself toiled 
up the staircase of Lamb Court, and to the door on which the 
names of Mr. Warrington and Mr. Pendennis were painted. 

For a gentleman of fashion, as poor Pen was represented to 
be, it must be confessed, that the apartments he and his friend 
occupied were not very suitable. The ragged carpet had grown 
only more ragged during the two years of joint occupancy : a 
constant odor of tobacco perfumed the sitting-room : Bacon 
tumbled over the laundress’s buckets in the passage through 
which he had to pass ; Warrington’s shooting-jacket was as 
tattered at the elbows as. usual ; and the chair which Bacon was 
requested to take on entering, broke down with the publisher. 
Warrington burst out laughing, said that Bacon had got the 


PEND ENNIS. 


423 

game chair, and bawled out to Pen to fetch a sound one from 
his bedroom. And seeing the publisher looking round the 
dingy room with an air of profound pity and wonder, asked him 
whether he didn’t think the apartments were elegant, and if he 
would like, for Mrs. Bacon’s drawing-room, any of the articles 
of furniture ? Mr. Warrington’s character, as a humorist, was 
known to Mr. Bacon : “ I never can make that chap out,” the 
publisher was heard to say, “ or tell whether he is in earnest or 
only chaffing.” 

It is very possible that Mr. Bacon would have set the two 
gentlemen clown as impostors altogether, but that there chanced 
to be on the breakfast-table certain cards of invitation which 
the post of the morning had brought in for Pen, and which 
happened to come from some very exalted personages of the 
beaii-7?ionde, into which our young man had his introduction. 
Looking down upon these, Bacon saw that the Marchioness of 
Steyne would be at home to Mr. Arthur Pendennis upon a given 
day, and that another lady of distinction proposed to have 
dancing at her house upon a certain future evening. Warring- 
ton saw the admiring publisher eyeing these documents. “ Ah,” 
said he, with an air of simplicity, “ Pendennis is one of the 
most affable young men I ever knew, Mr. Bacon. Here is a 
young fellow that dines with all the great men in London, and 
yet he’ll take his mutton-chop with you and me quite content- 
edly. There’s nothing like the affability of the old English 
gentleman.” 

“ Oh no, nothing,” said Mr. Bacon. 

“ And you wonder why he should go on living up three 
pair of stairs with me, don’t you, now ? Well, it is a queer 
taste. But we are fond of each other ; and as I can’t afford to 
live in a grand house, he comes and stays in these ricketty 
old chambers with me. He’s a man that can afford to live any- 
where.” 

“ I fancy it don’t cost him much here ,” thought Mr. Bacon ; 
and the object of these praises presently entered the room from 
his adjacent sleeping apartment. 

Then Mr. Bacon began to speak upon the subject of his 
visit ; said he heard that Mr. Pendennis had a manuscript 
novel ; professed himself anxious to have a sight of that work, 
and had no doubt that they would come to terms respecting it. 
What would be his price for it ? would he give Bacon the refusal 
of it ? he would find our house a liberal house, and so forth. 
The delighted Pen assumed an air of indifference, and said that 
he was already in treaty with Bungay, and could give no 


424 


PENDENNIS. 


definite answer. This piqued the other into such liberal, 
though vague offers, that Pen began to fancy Eldorado was 
opening to him, and that his fortune was made from that day. 

I shall not mention what was the sum of money which Mr. 
Arthur Pendennis finally received for the first edition of his 
novel of “ Walter Lorraine,” lest other young literary aspirants 
should expect to be as lucky as he was, and unprofessional 
persons forsake their own callings, whatever they may be, for 
the sake of supplying the world with novels, whereof there is 
already a sufficiency. Let no young people be misled and rush 
fatally into romance-writing : for one book which succeeds let 
them remember the many that fail, I do not say deservedly or 
otherwise, and wholesomely abstain : or if they venture, at 
least let them do so at their own peril. As for those wffio have 
already written novels, this warning is not addressed, of course, 
to them. Let them take their wares to market ; let them apply 
to Bacon and Bungay, and all the publishers in the Row, or 
the metropolis, and may they be happy in their ventures ! This 
world is so wide, and the tastes of mankind happily so various, 
that there is always a chance for every man, and he may win 
the prize by his genius or by his good fortune. But what is the 
chance of success or failure ; of obtaining popularity, or of 
holding it when achieved ? One man goes over the ice, which 
bears him, and a score who follow flounder in. In fine, Mr. 
Pendennis’s was an exceptional case, and applies to himself 
only : and I assert solemnly, and will to the last maintain, that 
it is one thing to write a novel, and another to get money 
for it. 

By merit, then, or good fortune, or the skilful playing off of 
Bungay against Bacon which Warrington performed (and which 
an amateur novelist is quite welcome to try upon any two pub- 
lishers in the trade), Pen’s novel was actually sold for a certain 
sum of money to one of the two eminent patrons of letters 
whom we have introduced to our readers. The sum was so 
considerable that Pen thought of opening an account at a 
banker’s or of keeping a cab and horse, or of descending into 
the first floor of Lamb Court into newly furnished apartments, 
or of migrating to the fashionable end of the town. 

Major Pendennis advised the latter move strongly ; he 
opened his eyes with wonder when he heard of the good luck 
that had befallen Pen ; and which the latter, as soon as it oc- 
curred, hastened eagerly to communicate to his uncle. The 
Major was almost angry that Pen should have earned so much 
money. “ Who the doose reads this kind of thing ? ” he thought 


PENDENNIS. 


42 5 

to himself, when he heard of the bargain which Pen had made. 
“ I never read novels and rubbish. Except Paul de Kock, who 
certainly makes me laugh, I don’t think I’ve looked into a book 
of the sort these thirty years. Gad ! Pen’s a lucky fellow. I 
should think he might write one of these in a month now, — say 
a month, that’s twelve in a year. Dammy, he may go on spin- 
ning this nonsense for the next four or five years, and make a 
fortune. In the meantime, I should wish him to live properly, 
take respectable apartments, and keep a brougham.” 

, Arthur, laughing, told Warrington what his uncle’s advice 
had been ; but he luckily had a much more reasonable coun- 
sellor than the old gentleman in the person of his friend, and 
in his own conscience, which said to him, “ Be grateful for this 
piece of good fortune ; don’t plunge into any extravagances. 
Pay back Laura ! ” And he wrote a letter to her, in which he 
told her his thanks and his regard ; and inclosed to her such 
an instalment of his debt as nearly wiped it off. The widow 
and Laura herself might well be affected by the letter. It was 
written with genuine tenderness and modesty ; and old Dr. 
Portman, when he read a passage in the letter, in which Pen, 
with an honest heart full of gratitude, humbly thanked Heaven 
for his present prosperity, and for sending him such dear and 
kind friends to support him in his ill-fortune, — when Doctor 
Portman read this portion of the letter, his voice faltered, and 
his eyes twinkled behind his spectacles. And when he had 
quite finished reading the same, and had taken his glasses off 
his nose, and had folded up the paper and given it back to the 
widow, I am constrained to say, that after holding Mrs. Pen- 
dennis’s hand for a minute, the Doctor drew that lady towards 
him and fairly kissed her : at which salute, of course, Helen 
burst out crying on the Doctor’s shoulder, for her heart was 
too full to give any other reply : and the Doctor, blushing a 
great deal after his feat, led the lady, with a bow, to the sofa, 
on which he seated himself by her ; and he mumbled out, in a 
low voice, some words of a Great Poet whom he loved very 
much, and who describes how in the days of his prosperity he 
had made “ the widow’s heart to sing for joy.” 

“ The letter does the boy very great honor, very great honor, 
my dear,” he said, patting it as it lay on Helen’s knee — “ and 
I think we have all reason to be thankful for it — very thankful. 
I need not tell you in what quarter, my dear, for you are a 
sainted woman : yes, Laura, my love, your mother is a sainted 
woman. And Mrs. Pendennis, ma’am, I shall order a copy of 
the book for myself, and another at the Book Club.” 


426 


PENDENNIS. 


We may be sure that the widow and Laura walked out to 
meet the mail which brought them their copy of Pen’s precious 
novel, as soon as that work was printed and ready for delivery 
to the public : and that they read it to each other : and that 
they also read it privately and separately, for when the widow 
came out of her room in her dressing-gown at one o’clock in 
the morning with volume two, which she had finished, she found 
Laura devouring volume three in bed. Laura did not say much 
about the book, but Helen pronounced that it was a happy mix- 
ture of Shakspeare, and Byron, and Walter Scott, and was quite 
certain that her son was the greatest genius, as he was the best 
son in the world. 

Did Laura not think about the book and the author, although 
she said so little ? At least she thought about Arthur Penden- 
nis. Kind as his tone was, it vexed her. She did not like his 
eagerness to repay that money. She would rather that her 
brother had taken her gift as she intended it : and was pained 
that there should be money calculations between them. His 
letters from London, written with The good-natured wish to 
amuse his mother, were full of descriptions of the famous people 
and the entertainments, and magnificence of the great City. 
Everybody was flattering him and spoiling him, she was sure. 
Was he not looking to some great marriage, with that cunning 
uncle for a Mentor (between whom and Laura there was always 
an antipathy), that inveterate worldling, whose whole thoughts 
were bent upon pleasure and rank and fortune ? He never 
alluded to — to old times, when he spoke of her. He had for- 
gotten them and her, perhaps : had he not forgotten other 
things and people ? 

These thoughts may have passed in Miss Laura’s mind, 
though she did not, she could not, confide them to Helen. She 
had one more secret, too, from that lady, which she could not 
divulge, perhaps because she knew how the widow would have 
rejoiced to know it. This regarded an event which had oc- 
curred during that visit to Lady Rockminster, which Laura had 
paid in the last Christmas holidays : when Pen was at home 
with his mother, and when Mr. Pynsent, supposed to be so cold 
and so ambitious, had formally offered his hand to Miss Bell. 
No one except herself and her admirer knew of his proposal : 
or that Pynsent had been rejected by her, and probably the 
reasons she gave to the mortified young man himself were not 
those which actuated her refusal, or those which she chose to 
acknowledge to herself. “ I never,” she told Pynsent, “ can 
accept such an offer as that which you make me, which you own 
is unknown to your family as I am sure it would be unwelcome 


PEND ENNIS. 


427 

to them. The difference of rank between us is too great. You 
are very kind to me here — too good and kind, dear Mr. Pynsent 
— but I am little better than a dependant.” 

“ A dependant ! who ever so thought of you ? You are the 
equal of all the world,” Pynsent broke out. 

“ I am a dependant at home, too,” Laura said, sweetly, “ and 
indeed, I would not be otherwise. Left early a poor orphan, I 
have fo'und the kindest and tenderest of mothers, and I have 
vowed never to leave her — never. Pray do not speak of this 
again — here, under your relative’s roof, or elsewhere. It is im- 
possible.” 

“ If Lady Rockminster asks you herself, will you listen to 
her ? ” Pynsent cried, eagerly. 

“ No,” Laura said. “ I beg you never to speak of this any 
more. I must go away if you do.” — And with this she left 
him. 

Pynsent never asked for Lady Rockminster’s intercession : 
he knew how vain it was to look for that : and he never spoke 
again on that subject to Laura or to any person. 

When at length the famous novel appeared, it not only 
met with applause from more impartial critics than Mrs. Pen- 
dennis, but, luckily for Pen, it suited the taste of the public, and 
obtained a quick and considerable popularity. Before two 
months were over, Pen had the satisfaction and surprise of 
seeing the second edition of “Walter Lorraine ” advertised in 
the newspapers ; and enjoyed the pleasure of reading and 
sending home the critiques of various literary journals and 
reviewers upon his book. Their censure did not much affect 
him ; for the good-natured young man was disposed to accept 
with considerable humility the dispraise of others. Nor did 
their praise elate him over much : for, like most honest persons, 
he had his own opinion about his own performance, and when 
a critic praised him in the wrong place, he was hurt rather than 
pleased by the compliment. But if a review of his work was 
very laudatory, it was a great pleasure to him to send it home 
to his mother at Fairoaks, and to think of the joy which it 
would give there. There are some natures, and perhaps, as we 
have said, Pendennis’s was one, which are improved and soft- 
ened by prosperity and kindness, as there are men of other 
dispositions, who become arrogant and graceless under good 
fortune. Happy he who can endure one or the other with 
modesty and good-humor ! Lucky he who has been educated 
to bea/his fate, whatsoever it may be, by an early example of 
uprightness, and a childish training in honor 1 


428 


PEND ENNIS. 


CHAPTER XLII. 

ALSATIA. 

Bred up, like a bailiff or a shabby attorney, about the pur 
lieus of the Inns of Court, Shepherd’s Inn is always to be 
found in the close neighborhood of Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and 
the Temple. Somewhere behind the black gables and smutty 
chimney-stacks of Wych Street, Holywell Street, Chancery 
Lane, the quadrangle lies, hidden from the outer world ; and it 
is approached by curious passages and ambiguous smoky 
alleys, on which the sun has forgotten to shine. Slop-sellers, 
brandy-ball and hard-bake vendors, purveyors of theatrical 
prints for youth, dealers in dingy furniture and bedding, sug- 
gestive of anything but sleep, line the narrow walls and dark 
casements with their wares. The doors are many-belled : and 
crowds of dirty children form endless groups about the steps : 
or around the shell-fish dealers’ trays in these courts ; whereof 
the damp pavements resound with pattens, and are drabbled 
with a never-failing mud. Ballad-singers come and chant here, 
in deadly guttural tones, satirical songs against the Whig ad- 
ministration, against the bishops and dignified clergy, against 
the German relatives of an august royal family : Punch sets up 
his theatre, sure of an audience, and occasionally of a halfpenny 
from the swarming occupants of the houses : women scream 
after their children for loitering in the gutter, or, worse still, 
against the husband who comes reeling from the gin-shop ; — 
there is a ceaseless din and life in these courts, out of which 
you pass into the tranquil, old-fashioned quadrangle of Shep- 
herd’s Inn. In a mangy little grass-plot in the centre rises up 
the statue of Shepherd, defended by iron railings from the as- 
saults of the boys. The Hall of the Inn, on which the found- 
er’s arms are painted, occupies one side of the square, the tall 
and ancient chambers are carried round other two sides, and 
over the central archway, which leads into Oldcastle Street, and 
so into the great London thoroughfare. 

The Inn may have been occupied by lawyers once : but the 
laity have long since been admitted into its precincts, and I do 
not know that any of the principal legal firms have their cham- 
bers here. The offices of the Pol wheedle and Tredyddlum 
Copper Mines occupy one set of the ground-floor chambers ; 


PENDENNIS. 


429 


the Registry of the Patent inventions and Union of Genius and 
Capital Company, another ; — the only gentleman whose name 
figures here, and in the “Law List,” is Mr. Campion, who 
wears mustaches, and who comes in his cab twice or thrice in a 
week ; and whose West End offices are in Curzon Street, May 
Fair, where Mrs. Campion entertains the nobility and gentry to 
whom her husband lends money. There, and on his glazed 
cards, he is Mr. Somerset Campion ; here he is Campion & 
Co. ; and the same tuft which ornaments his chin, sprouts from 
the under Up of the rest of the firm. It is splendid to see his 
cab-horse harness blazing with heraldic bearings, as the vehicle 
stops at the door leading to his chambers. The horse flings 
froth off his nostrils as he chafes and tosses under the shining 
bit. The reins and the breeches of the groom are glittering 
white, — the lustre of that equipage makes a sunshine in that 
shady place. 

Our old friend, Captain Costigan, has examined Campion’s 
cab and horse many an afternoon, as he trailed about the court 
in his carpet slippers and dressing-gown, with his old hat cocked 
over his fiye. He suns himself there after his breakfast, when 
the day is suitable.; and goes and pays a visit to the porter’s 
lodge, where he pats the heads of the children, and talks to Mrs. 
Bolton about the thayatres and me daughter Leedy Mirabel. 
Mrs. Bolton was herself in the profession once, and danced at 
the Wells in early days as the thirteenth of Mr. Serle’s forty 
pupils. 

Costigan lives in the third floor at No. 4, in the rooms which 
were Mr. Podmore’s, and whose name is still on the door-?— 
(somebody else’s name, by the way, is on almost all the doors 
in Shepherd’s Inn.) When Charley Podmore (the pleasing 
tenor singer, T. R. D. L., and at the Back Kitchen Concert 
Rooms,) married, and went to live at Lambeth, he ceded his 
chambers to Mr. Bows and Captain Costigan, who occupy them 
in common now, andyou may often hear the tones of Mr. Bows’s 
piano of fine days when the windows are open, and when he is 
practising for amusement, or for the instruction of a theatrical 
pupil, of whom he has one or two. Fanny Bolton is one, the por- 
tress’s daughter, who has heard tell of her mother’s theatrical 
glories, which she longs to emulate. She has a good voice and a 
pretty face and figure for the stage ; and she prepares the rooms 
and makes the beds and breakfasts for Messrs. Costigan and 
Bows, in return for which the latter instructs her in music and 
singing. But for his unfortunate propensity to liquor (and in that 
excess she supposes that all men of fashion indulge), she thinks 


PENDENNIS. 


43 ° 

the captain the finest gentleman in the world, and believes in all 
the versions of all his stories ; and she is very fond of Mr. 
Bows too, and very grateful to him, and this shy queer old gen- 
tleman has a fatherly fondness for her too, for in truth his heart 
is full of kindness, and he is never easy unless he loves some- 
body. 

Costigan has had the carriages of visitors of distinction be- 
fore his humble door in Shepherd’s Inn : and to hear him talk 
of a morning (for his evening song is of a much more melan- 
choly nature) you would fancy that Sir Charles and Lady Mira- 
bel were in the constant habit of calling at his chambers, and 
bringing with them the select nobility to visit the “old man, the 
honest old half-pay Captain, poor old Jack Costigan,” as Cos 
calls himself. 

The truth is, that Lady Mirabel has left her husband’s card 
(which has been stuck in the 'little looking-glass over the man- 
tel-piece of the sitting-room at No. 4, for these many months 
past), and has come in person to see her father, but not of late 
days. A kind person, disposed to discharge her duties gravely, 
upon her marriage with Sir Charles, she settled a little pension 
upon her father, who occasionally was admitted to the table of 
his daughter and son-in-law. At first poor Cos’s behavior “ in 
the hoight of poloit societee,” as he denominated Lady Mirabel’s 
drawing-room table, was harmless, if it was absurd. As he 
clothed his person in his best attire, so he selected the longest 
and richest words in his vocabulary to deck his conversation, 
and adopted a solemnity of demeanor which struck with aston- 
ishment all those persons in whose company he happened to 
be. — “ Was your Leedyship in the Pork to dee ? ” he would 
demand of his daughter. “ I looked for your equipage in veen : 
— the poor old man was not gratified by the soight of his 
daughter’s choriot. Sir Chorlus, I saw your neem at the Levee ; 
many’s the Levee at the Castle at Dublin that poor old Jack 
Costigan has attended in his time. Did the Juke look pretty 
well ? Bedad, I’ll call at Apsley House and lave me cyard 
upon ’um. I thank ye, James, a little dthrop more champeane.” 
Indeed, he was magnificent in his courtesy to all, and addressed 
his observations not only to the master and the guests, but to 
the domestics who waited at the table, and who had some diffi- 
culty in maintaining their professional gravity while they waited 
on Captain Costigan. 

On the first two or three visits to his son-in-law, Costigan 
maintained a strict sobriety, content to make up for his lost 
time when he got to the Back Kitchen, where he bragged about 


PENDENNIS. 


43 * 

his son-in-law’s dart and burgundee, until his own utterance 
began to fail him, over his sixth tumbler of whiskey-punch. 
But with familiarity his caution vanished, and poor Cos lament- 
ably disgraced himself at Sir Charles Mirabel’s table, by pre- 
mature inebriation. A carriage was called for him : the hos- 
pitable door was shut upon him. Often and sadly did he 
speak to his friends at the Kitchen of his resemblance to King 
Lear in the plee — of his having a thankless choild, bedad — of 
his being a pore worn-out lonely old man, dthriven to dthrink- 
ing by ingratitude, and seeking to dthrown his sorrows in punch. 

It is painful to be obliged to record the weaknesses of 
fathers, but it must be furthermore told of Costigan, that when 
his credit was exhausted and his money gone, he would not un- 
frequently beg money from his daughter, and make statements 
to her not altogether consistent with strict truth. On one day 
a bailiff was about to lead him to prison, he wrote “unless the 
— to you insignificant — sum of three pound five can be forth- 
coming to liberate a poor man’s gray hairs from jail.” And 
the good-natured Lady Mirabel despatched the money neces- 
sary for her father’s liberation, with a caution to him to be 
more economical for the future. On a second occasion the 
Captain met with a frightful accident, and broke a plate-glass 
window in the Strand, for which the proprietor of the shop 
held him liable. The money was forthcoming this time too, to 
repair her papa’s disaster, and was carried down by Lady Mira- 
bel’s servant to the slip-shod messenger and aide-de-camp of 
the Captain, who brought the letter announcing his mishap. 
If the servant had followed the Captain’s aide-de-camp who 
carried the remittance, he would have seen that gentleman, a 
person of Costigan’s country too (for have we not said, that 
however poor an Irish gentleman is, he always has a poorer 
Irish gentleman to run on his errands and transact his pecu- 
niary affairs ?) call a cab from the nearest stand, and rattle 
down to the Roscius’s Head, Harlequin Yard, Drury Lane, 
where the Captain was indeed in pawn, and for several glasses 
containing rum-and-water, or other spirituous refreshments, of 
which he and his staff had partaken. On a third melancholy 
occasion he wrote that he was attacked by illness, and wanted 
money to pay the physician whom he was compelled to call in ; 
and this time Lady Mirabel, alarmed about her father’s safety, 
and perhaps reproaching herself that she had of late lost sight 
of him, called for her carriage and drove to Shepherd’s Inn, at 
the gate of which she alighted, whence she found the way to 
her father’s chambers, “ No. 4, third floor, name of Podmore 


43 2 


PEND ENNIS. 


over the door,” the portress said, with many curtseys, pointing 
towards the door of the house into which the affectionate 
daughter entered and mounted the dingy stair. Alas ! the 
door, surmounted by the name of Podmore, was opened to her 
by poor Cos in his shirt-sleeves, and prepared with the grid- 
iron to receive the mutton-chops which Mrs. Bolton had gone 
to purchase. 

Also, it was not pleasant for Sir Charles Mirabel to have 
letters constantly addressed to him at Brookes’s, with the in- 
formation that Captain Costigan was in the hall, waiting for an 
answer; or when he went to play his rubber at the Travellers’, 
to be obliged to shoot out of his brougham and run up the 
steps rapidly, lest his father-in-law should seize upon him ; and 
to think that while he read his paper or played his whist, the 
Captain was walking on the opposite side of Pall Mall, with 
that dreadful cocked hat, and the eye beneath it fixed steadily 
upon the windows of the club. Sir Charles was a weak man ; 
he was old, and had many infirmities : he cried about his 
father-in-law to his wife, whom he adored with senile infatua- 
tion : he said he must go abroad, — he must go and live in the 
country, — he should die, or have another fit if he saw that 
man again — he kn£w he should. And it was only by paying a 
second visit to Captain Costigan, and representing to him, that 
if he plagued Sir Charles by letters, or addressed him in the 
street, or made any further applications for loans, his allowance 
would be withdrawn altogether ; that Lady Mirabel was en- 
abled to keep her papa in order, and to restore tranquillity to 
her husband. And on occasion of this visit, she sternly re- 
buked Bows for not keeping a better watch over the Captain ; 
desired that he should not be allowed to drink in that shame- 
ful way ; and that the people at the horrid taverns which he 
frequented should be told, upon no account to give him credit. 
“ Papa’s conduct is bringingme to the grave,” she said (though 
she looked perfectly healthy), “ and you, as an old man, Mr. 
Bows, and one that pretended to have a regard for us, ought 
to be ashamed of abetting him in it.” These were the thanks 
which honest Bows got for his friendship and his life’s devdtion. 
And I do not suppose that the old philosopher was much vrorse 
off than many other men, or had greater reason to grumble. 

Oil the second floor of the next house to Bows’s, in Shep- 
herd’s Inn, at No. 3, live two other acquaintances of ours. 
Colonel Altamont, agent to the Nawaub of Lucknow, and 
Captain the Chevalier Edward Strong. No name at all is over 



HER LADYSHIP’S VISIT. 





PENDENNIS. 


433 

their door. The Captain does not choose to let all the world 
know where he lives, and his cards bear the address of a Jermyn 
Street hotel ; and as for the Ambassador Plenipotentiary of the 
Indian potentate, he is not an envoy accredited to the Courts 
of St. James’s or Leadenhall Street, but is here on a confiden- 
tial mission, quite independent of the East India Company or 
the Board of Control. “ In fact,” as Strong says, “ Colonel 
Altamont’s object being financial, and to effectuate a sale of 
some of the principal diamonds and rubies of the Lucknow 
crown, Jiis wish is not to report himself at the India House or 
in Cannon Row, but rather to negotiate with private capitalists 
— with whom he has had important transactions both in this 
country and on the Continent.” 

We have said that these anonymous chambers of Strong’s 
had been very comfortably furnished since the arrival of Sir 
Francis Clavering in London, and the Chevalier might boast 
with reason to the friends who visited him, that few retired 
Captains were more snugly quartered than he, in his crib in 
Shepherd’s Inn. There were three rooms below : the office 
where Strong transacted his business — whatever that might be 
— and where still remained the desk and railings of the de- 
parted officials who had preceded him, and the Chevalier’s own 
bedroom and sitting-room ; and a private stair led out of the 
office to two upper apartments, the one occupied by Colonel 
Altamont, and the other serving as the kitchen, of the establish- 
ment, and the bedroom of Mr. Grady, the attendant. These 
rooms were on a level with the apartments of our friends Bows 
and Costigan next door at No. 4 ; and by reaching over the 
communicating leads, Grady could command the mignonette- 
box which bloomed in Bows’s window. 

From Grady’s kitchen casement often came odors still more 
fragrant. The three old soldiers who formed the garrison of 
No. 4, were all skilled in the culinary art. Grady was great 
at an Irish stew ; the Colonel was famous .for pillaus and cur- 
ries ; and as for Strong, he could cook anything. He made 
French dishes and Spanish dishes, stews, fricassees, and ome- 
lettes, to perfection • nor was there any man in England more 
hospitable than he was when his purse was full, or his credit 
was good. At those happy periods, he could give a friend, as 
he said, a good dinner, a good glass of wine, and a good song 
afterwards ; and poor Cos often heard with envy the roar of 
Strong’s choruses, and the musical clinking of the glasses, as he 
sat in his own room, so far removed and yet so near to those 
festivities. It was not expedient to invite Mr. Costigan always ; 

28 


PENDENN1S. 


434 

his practice of inebriation was lamentable j and he bored 
Strong’s guests with his stories when sober, and with his 
maudlin tears when drunk. 

A strange and motley set they were, these friends of the 
Chevalier ; and though Major Pendennis would not much have 
relished their company, Arthur and Warrington liked it not a 
little. There was a history about every man of the set : they 
seemed all to have had their tides of luck and bad fortune. 
Most of them had wonderful schemes and speculations in their 
pockets, and plenty for making rapid and extraordinary for- 
tunes. Jack Holt had been in Queen Christina’s army, when 
Ned Strong had fought on the other side ; and was now organ- 
izing a little scheme for smuggling tobacco into London, which 
must bring thirty thousand a year to any man who would ad- 
vance fifteen hundred, just to bribe the last officer of the Excise 
who held out, and had wind of the scheme. Tom Diver, who 
had been in the Mexican navy, knew of a specie ship which had 
been sunk in the first year of the war, with three hundred and 
eighty thousand dollars on board, and a hundred and eighty 
thousand pounds in bars and doubloons. “ Give me eighteen 
hundred pounds,” Tom said, “ and I’m off to-morrow. I take 
out four men and a diving-bell, with me ; and I return in ten 
months to take my seat in Parliament, by Jove ! and to buy 
back my family estate.” Keightley, the manager of the Tre- 
dyddlum and Polwheedle Copper Mines (which were as yet 
under water), besides singing as good a second as any profes- 
sional man, and besides the Tredyddlum Office, had a Smyrna 
Sponge Company, and a little quicksilver operation in view, 
which would set him straight with the world yet. Filby had 
been everything : a corporal of dragoons, a field-preacher, and 
missionary-agent for converting the Irish ; an actor at a Green- 
wich fair-booth, in front of which his father’s attorney found 
him when the old gentleman died and left him that famous 
property, from which he got no rents now, and of which nobody 
exactly knew the situation. Added to these was Sir Francis 
Clavering, Bart., who liked their society, though he did not 
much add to its amusements by his convivial powers. But he 
was made much of by the company now, on account of his 
wealth and position in the world. He told his little story and 
sang his little song or two with great affability ; and he had had 
his own history, too, before his accession to good fortune ; and 
had seen the inside of more prisons than one, and written his 
name on many a stamped paper. 

When Altamont first returned from Paris, and after he had 


PEMDENNIS. 


435 

communicated with Sir Francis Clavering from the hotel at 
which he had taken up his quarters (and which he had reached 
in a very denuded state, considering the wealth of diamonds 
and rubies with which this honest man was entrusted), Strong 
was sent to him by his patron the Baronet ; paid his little bill 
at the inn, and invited him to come and sleep for a night or 
two at the chambers, where he subsequently took up his resi- 
dence. To negotiate with this man was very well, but to have 
such a person settled in his rooms, and to be constantly bur- 
dened with such society, did not suit the Chevalier’s taste 
much ; and he grumbled not a little to his principal. 

“ I wish you would put this bear into somebody else’s cage,” 
he said to Clavering. “ The fellow’s no gentleman. I don’t 
like walking with him. He dresses himself like a nigger on a 
holiday. I took him to the play the other night ; and, by Jove, 
sir, he abused the actor who was doing the part of villain in the 
play, and swore at him so, that the people in the boxes wanted 
to turn him Out. The afterpiece was the 1 Brigand,’ where 
Wallack comes in wounded, you know, and dies. When he died, 

Altamont began to cry like a child, and said it was a d 

shame, and cried and swore so, that there was another row, and 
everybody laughing. Then I had to take him away, because he 
wanted to take his coat off to one fellow who laughed at him ; 
and bellowed to him to stand up like a man. — Who is he ? 
Where the deuce does he come from? You had best tell me 
the whole story, Frank ; you must one day. You and he have 
robbed a church together, that’s my belief. You had better 
get it off your mind at once, Clavering, and tell me what this 
Altamont is, and what hold he has over you.” 

“ Hang him ! I wish he was dead ! ” was the Baronet’s only 
reply ; and his countenance became so gloomy, that Strong did 
not think fit to question his patron any further at that time ; 
but resolved, if need were, to try and discover for himself 
what was the secret tie between Altamont and Clavering. 


CHAPTER XLIII. 

IN WHICH THE COLONEL NARRATES SOME OF HIS ADVENTURES* 

Early in the forenoon of the day after the dinner in Gros- 
venor Place, at which Colonel Altamont had chosen to appear, 
the Colonel emerged from his chamber in the upper story at 


pENbExms. 


436 

Shepherd’s Inn, and entered into Strong’s sitting-room, where 
the Chevalier sat in his easy chair with the newspaper and his 
cigar. He was a man who made his tent comfortable wherever 
he pitched it, and long before Altamont’s arrival, had done 
justice to a copious breakfast of fried eggs and broiled rashers, 
which Mr. Grady had prepared secundum artem. Good-hu- 
mored and talkative, he preferred any company rather than 
none ; and though he had not the least liking for his fellow- 
lodger, and would not have grieved to hear that the accident 
had befallen him which Sir Francis Clavering desired so fer- 
vently, yet kept on fair terms with him. He had seen Altamont 
to bed with great friendliness on the night previous, and taken 
away his candle for fear of accidents ; and finding a spirit-bottle 
empty, upon which he had counted for his nocturnal refreshment, 
had drunk a glass of water with perfect contentment over his 
pipe, before he turned into his own crib and to sleep. That 
enjoyment never failed him : he had always an easy temper, a 
faultless digestion, and a rosy cheek ; and whether he was going 
into action the next morning or to prison (and both had been 
his lot), in the camp or the Fleet, the worthy Captain snored 
healthfully through the night, and woke with a good heart and 
appetite, for the struggles or difficulties or pleasures of the day. 

The first act of Colonel Altamont was to bellow to Grady 
for a pint of pale-ale, the which he first poured into a pewter 
flagon, whence he transferred it to his own lips. He put down 
the tankard empty, drew a great breath, wiped his mouth in his 
dressing-gown (the difference of the color of his beard from his 
dyed wffiiskers had long struck Captain Strong, who had seen 
too that his hair was fair under his black wig, but made no re- 
marks upon these circumstances) — the Colonel drew a great 
breath, and professed himself immensely refreshed by his 
draught. “Nothing like that beer,” he remarked, “when the 
coppers are hot. Many a day I’ve drunk a dozen of Bass at 
Calcutta, and — and ” 

“ And at Lucknow, I suppose,” Strong said with a laugh. 
“ I got the beer for you on purpose : knew you’d want it after 
last night.” And the Colonel began to talk about his adven- 
tures of the preceding evening. 

“ I cannot help myself,” the Colonel said, beating his head 
with his big hand. “I’m a madman when I get the liquor on 
board me ; and ain’t fit to be trusted with a spirit-bottle. When 
I once begin I can’t stop till I’ve emptied it ; and when I’ve 
swallowed it, Lord knows what I say or what I don’t say. I 
dined at home here quite quiet. Grady gave me just my two 


PZNDENmS. 


437 


tumblers, and I intended to pass the evening at the Black and 
Red as sober as a parson. Why did you leave that confounded 
sample-bottle of Hollands out of the cupboard, Strong ? Grady 
must go out too, and leave me the kettle a-boiling for tea. It 
was of no use, I couldn’t keep away from it. Washed it all 
down, sir, by Jingo. And it’s my belief I had some more, too, 
afterwards at that infernal little thieves’ den.” 

“What, were you there too?” Strong asked,' “and before 
you came to Grosvenor Place ? That was beginning betimes.” 

“ Early hours to be drunk and cleared out before nine 
o’clock, eh ? But so it was. Yes, like a great big fool, I must 
go there ; and found the fellows dining, Blacldand and young 
Moss, and two or three more of the thieves. If we’d gone to 
Rouge et Noir, I must have won. But we didn’t try- the black 
and red. No, hang ’em, they know’d I’d have beat ’em at that 
— I must have beat ’em — I can’t help beating ’em, I tell you. 
But they was too cunning for me. That rascal Blackland got 
the bones out, and we played hazard on the dining-table. And 
I dropped all the money I had from you in the morning, be 
hanged to my luck. It was that that set me wild, and I sup- 
pose I must have been very hot about the head, for I went off 
thinking to get some more money from Clavering, I recollect ; 
and then — and then I don’t much remember what happened till 
I woke this morning, and heard old Bows at No. 3 playing on 
his pianner.” 

Strong mused for a while as he lighted his cigar with a coal. 
“ I should like to know how you always draw money from Cla- 
vering, Colonel,” he said. 

The Colonel burst out with a laugh — “ Ha, ha ! he owes it 
me,” he said. 

“ I don’t know that that’s a reason with Frank for paying,’ 
Strong answered. “ He owes plenty besides you.” 

“ Well, he gives it me because he is so fond of me,” the 
other said with the same grinning sneer. “ He loves me like a 
brother; you know he does, Captain. — No? — He don’t? — 
Well, perhaps he don’t ; and if you ask me no questions, per- 
haps I’ll tell you no lies, Captain Strong — put that in your 
pipe and smoke it, my boy.” 

“ But I’ll give up that confounded brandy-bottle,” the 
Colonel continued, after a pause. “ I must give it up, or it’ll 
be the ruin of me.’ 

“ It makes you say queer things,” said the Captain, looking 
Altamont hard in the face. “ Remember what you said last 
night, at Clavering’s table.” 


PENDENNIS . 


438 

“ Say ; What did I say ? ” asked the other hastily. “ Did 
I split anything ? Dammy, Strong, did I split anything ? ” 

“ Ask me no questions, and I will tell you no lies,” the 
Chevalier replied on his part. Strong thought of the words 
Mr. Altamont had used, and his abrupt departure from the 
Baronet's dining-table and house as soon as he recognized 
Major Pendennis, or Captain Beak, as he called the Major. 
But Strong resolved to seek an explanation of these words 
otherwise than from Colonel Altamont, and did not choose to 
recall them to the other’s memory. “ No,” he said then, “you 
didn’t split as you call it, Colonel ; it was only a trap of mine 
to see if I could make you speak ; but you didn’t say a word 
that anybody could comprehend — you were too far gone for that.’ 

So much the better, Altamont thought ; and heaved a great 
sigh, as if relieved. Strong remarked the emotion, but took 
no notice, and the other being in a communicative mood, went 
on speaking. 

“ Yes, I own to my faults,” continued the Colonel. “ There 
is some things I can’t, do what I will, resist : a bottle of brandy, 
a box of dice, and a beautiful woman. No man of pluck and 
spirit, no man as was worth his salt ever could, as I know of. 
There’s hardly p’raps a country in the world in which them 
three ain’t got me into trouble.” 

“ Indeed ? ” said Strong. 

“Yes, from the age of fifteen, when I ran away from home, 
and went cabin-boy on board an Indiaman, till now, when I’m 
fifty year old, pretty nigh, them *women have always been my 
ruin. Why, it was one of ’em, and with such black eyes and 
jewels on her neck, and sattens and ermine like a duchess, I 
tell you — it was one of ’em at Paris that swept off the best 
part of the thousand pound as I went off with. Didn’t I ever 
tell you of it ? Well, I don’t mind. At first I was very cautious, 
and having such a lot of money kept it close and lived like 
a gentleman — Colonel Altamont, Meurice’s hotel, and that sort 
of thing — never played, except at the public tables, and won 
more than I lost. Well, sir, there was a chap that I saw at the 
hotel and the Palace Royal too, a regular swell fellow, with 
white kid gloves and a tuft to his chin, Bloundell-Bloundell his 
name was, as I made acquaintance with somehow, and he asked 
me to dinner, and took me to Madame the Countess de Fol- 
jambe’s soirees — such a woman, Strong ! — such an eye ! — such 
hand at the pianner. Lor bless you, she’d sit down and sing 
a to you, and gaze at you, until she warbled your soul out of 
your body a’most. She asked me to go to her evening-parties 


PENDENMIS. 


439 

every Toosday ; and didn’t I take opera-boxes and give her 
dinners at the restaurateur’s, that’s all ? But I had a run of 
luck at the tables, and it was not in the dinners and opera- 
boxes that poor Clavering’s money went. No, be hanged to 
it, it was swep off in another way. One night, at the Countess’s, 
there was several of us at supper — Mr. Bloundell-Bloundell, the 
Honorable Deuceace, the Marky de la Tour de Force — all tip- 
top nobs sir, and the height of fashion, when we had supper, 
and champagne you may be sure in plenty, and then some of 
that confounded brandy. I would have it — I would go on at 
it — the Countess mixed the tumblers of punch for me, and we 
had cards as well as grog after supper, and I played and drank 
until I don’t know what I did. I was like I was last night. I 
was taken away and put to bed somehow, and never woke until 
the next day, to a roaring headache, and to see my servant, 
who said the Honorable Deuceace wanted to see me, and was 
waiting in the sitting-room. ‘How are you, Colonel ? ’ says 
he, a-coming into my bedroom. ‘ How long did you stay last 
night after I went away ? The play was getting too high for me, 
and I’d lost enough to you for one night.’ 

“ ‘To me, says I, how’s that, my dear feller ? (for though he 
was an Earl’s son, we was as familiar as you and me). How’s 
that, my dear feller,’ says I, and he tells me, that he had bor- 
rowed thirty louis of me at vingt-et-un, that he gave me an 
I O U for it the night before, which I put into my pocket-book 
before he left the room. I takes out my card-case — it was the 
Countess as worked it for me — and there was the I O U sure 
enough, and he paid me thirty louis in gold down upon the table 
at my bedside. So I said he was a gentleman, and asked him 
if he would like to take anything, when my servant should get 
it for him ; but the Honorable Deuceace don’t drink of a morn- 
ing, and he went away to some business which he said he had. 

“ Presently there’s another ring at my outer door ; and this 
time it’s Bloundell-Bloundell and the Marky that comes in. 
‘ Bong jour, Marky,’ says I. ‘ Good morning — no headache,’ 
says he. So I said I had one ; and how I must have been 
uncommon queer the night afore ; but they both declared I 
didn’t show no signs of having had too much, but took my liquor 
as grave as a judge. 

“ ‘ So,’ says the Marky, ‘ Deuceace has been with you ; we 
met him in the Palais Royal as we were coming from breakfast. 
Has he settled with you ? Get it while you can : he’s a slip- 
pery card ; and as he won three ponies of Bloundell, I recom- 
mend you to get your money while he has some.’ 


440 


PENDEMNtS. 


“ ‘ He has paid me,’ says I ; ‘ but I knew no more than the 
dead that he owed me anything, and don’t remember a bit about 
lending him thirty louis.’ 

“The Marky and Bloundell looks and smiles at each other 
at this ; and Bloundell says, ‘ Colonel, you are a queer feller. 
No man could have supposed, from your manners, that you had 
tasted anything stronger than tea all night, and yet you forget 
things in the morning. Come, come, — tell that to the marines, 
my friend, — we won’t have it at any price.’ 

“ ‘ En effet says the Marky, twiddling his little black mus- 
taches in the chimney-glass, and making a lunge or two as he 
used to do at the fencing-school. (He was a wonder at the 
fencing-school, and I’ve seen him knock down the image four- 
teen times running, at Lepage’s.) * Let us speak of affairs. 
Colonel, you understand that affairs of honor are best settled 
at once : perhaps it won’t be inconvenient to you to arrange 
our little matters of last night.’ 

“ ‘ What little matters ? ’ says I. * Do you owe me any 
money, Marky ? ’ 

“ ‘ Bah ! ’ says he ; ‘ do not let us have any more jesting. I 
have your note of hand for three hundred and forty louis. La 
void /’ says he, taking out a paper from his pocket-book. 

“ 1 And mine for two hundred and ten,’ says Bloundell 
Bloundell, and he pulls out his bit of paper. 

“ I was in such a rage of wonder at this, that I sprang out 
of bed, and wrapped my dressing-gown round me. ‘ Are you 
come here to make a fool of me ? ’ says I. ‘ I don’t owe you 
two hundred, or two thousand, or two louis ; and I won’t pay 
you a farthing. Do you suppose you can catch me with your 
notes of hand ? I laugh at ’em, and at you ; and I believe you 
to be a couple ’ 

“ ‘ A couple of what ? ’ says Mr. Bloundell. ‘ You, of course, 
are aware that we are a couple of men of honor, Colonel 
Altamont, and not come here to trifle or to listen to abuse from 
you. You will either pay us or we will expose you as a cheat, 
and chastise you as a cheat, too,’ says Bloundell. 

“ ‘ Oui, pcirbleu] says the Marky, — but I didn’t mind him, 
for I could have thrown the little fellow out of the window ; but 
it was different with Bloundell, — he was a large man, that 
weighs three stone more than me, and stands six inches higher, 
and I think he could have done for me. 

“ ‘ Monsieur will pay, or Monsieur will give me the reason 
why. I believe you’re little better than a polisson , Colonel 
Altamont,’ — that was the phrase he used ” — Altamont said with 


PENDENNIS. 


441 


a grin — “ and I got plenty more of this language from the two 
fellers, and was in the thick of the row with them, when another 
of our party came in. This was a friend of mine — a gent I had 
met at Boulogne, and had taken to the Countess’s myself. And 
as he hadn’t played at all on the previous night, and had actually 
warned me against Bloundell and the others, I told the story to 
him, and so did the other two. 

“‘lain very sorry,’ says he. ‘You would go on playing: 
the Countess entreated you to discontinue. These gentlemen 
offered repeatedly to stop. It was you that insisted on the 
large stakes, not they.’ In fact he charged dead against me : 
and when the two others went away, he told me how the Marky 
would shoot me as sure as my name was — was what it is. ‘ I 
left the Countess crying, too,’ said he. ‘ She hates these two 
men ; she has warned you repeatedly against them ’ (which she 
actually had done, and often told me never to play with them), 
‘and now, Colonel, I have left her in hysterics almost, lest there 
should be any quarrel between you, and that confounded Marky 
should put a bullet through your head. It’s my belief,’ says 
my friend, ‘ that that woman is distractedly in love with you.’ 

“ ‘ Do you think so ? ’ says I ; upon which my friend told 
me how she had actually gone down on her knees to him and 
said, * Save Colonel Altamont ! ’ 

“ As soon as I was dressed, I went and called upon that 
lovely woman. She gave a shriek and pretty near fainted when 
she saw me. She called me Ferdinand, — I’m blest if she 
didn’t.” 

“I thought your name was Jack,” said Strong, with a 
laugh ; at which the Colonel blushed very much behind his 
dyed whiskers. 

“A man may have more names than one, mayn’t he, 
Strong ? ” Altamont asked. “ When I’m with a lady, I like to 
take a good one. She called me by my Christian name. She 
cried fit to break your heart. I can’t stand seeing a woman 
cry — never could — not whilst I’m fond of her. She said she 
could not bear to think of my losing so much money in her 
house. Wouldn’t I take her diamonds and necklaces, and pay 
part ? . 

“i. swore I wouldn’t touch a farthing’s worth of her jew- 
elry, which perhaps I did not think was worth a great deal,— 
but what can a woman do more than give you her all ? That’s 
the sort I like, and I know there’s plenty of ’em. • And I told 
her to be easy about the money, for I would not pay one single 
farthing. 


442 


PENDENNIS 


4 ‘ Then they’ll shoot you,’ says she ; ‘ they’ll kill mj 
Ferdinand.’ 

“ They’ll kill my Jack wouldn’t have sounded well in French,” 
Strong said, laughing. 

“Never mind about names,” said the other, sulkily : a man 
of honor may take any name he chooses, I suppose.” 

“ Well, go on with your story,” said Strong. “ She said 
they would kill you.” 

“ ‘No,’ says I, ‘ they won’t : for I will not let that scamp of 
a Marquis send me out of the world ; and if he lays a hand on 
me, I’ll brain him, Marquis as he is.’ 

“ At this the Countess shrank back from me as if I had said 
something very shocking. ‘ Do I understand Colonel Altamont 
aright ? ’ says she ; ‘ and that a British officer refuses to meet 
any person who provokes him to the field of honor ? ’ 

“ ‘ Field of honor be hanged, Countess ! ’ says I. ‘ You 
would not have me be a target for that little scoundrel’s pistol 
practice.’ 

“ ‘ Colonel Altamont,’ says the Countess, ‘ I thought you 
were a man of honor — I thought, I — but no matter. Good- 
by, sir,’ — And she was sweeping out of the room, her voice 
regular choking in her pocket-handkerchief. 

“ ‘ Countess ! ’ says I, rushing after her and seizing her 
hand. 

“ ‘ Leave me, Monsieur le Colonel,’ says she, shaking me 
off, ‘ my father was a General of the Grand Army. A soldier 
should know how to pay all his debts of honor.’ 

“ What could I do ? Everybody was against me. Caroline 
said I had lost the money : though I didn’t remember a syllable 
about the business. I had taken Deuceace’s money too ; but 
then it was because he offered it to me you know, and that’s a 
different thing. Every one of these chaps was a man of fashion 
and honor ; and the Marky and the Countess of the first 
families in France. And by Jove, sir, rather than offend her, 
I paid the money up : five hundred and sixty gold Napoleons, 
by Jove: besides three hundred which I lost when I had my 
revenge. 

“ And I can’t tell you at this minute whether I was done or 
not,” concluded the Colonel, musing. “ Sometimes I think I 
was ; but then Caroline was so fond of me. That woman would 
never have seen me done : never, I’m sure she wouldn’t : at 
least, if she would, I’m deceived in woman.” 

Any further revelations of his past life which Altamont 
might have been disposed to confide to his honest comrade the 


PENDENNIS. 


443 

Chevalier, were interrupted by a knocking at the outer door of 
their chambers ; which, when opened by Grady the servant, 
admitted no less a person than Sir Francis Clavering into the 
presence of the two worthies. 

The Governor, by Jove,” cried Strong, regarding the 
arrival of his patron with surprise. “ What’s brought you 
here ? ” growled Altamont, looking sternly from under his 
heavy eyebrows at the Baronet. “ It’s no good, I warrant.” 
And indeed, good very seldom brought Sir Francis Clavering 
into that or any other place. 

Whenever he came into Shepherd’s Inn, it was money that 
brought the unlucky baronet into those precincts ; and there 
was commonly a gentleman of the money-dealing world in wait- 
ing for him at Strong’s chambers, or at Campion’s below; and 
a question of bills to negotiate or to renew. Clavering was a 
man who had never looked his debts fairly in the face, familiar 
as he had been with them all his life ; as long as he could re- 
new a bill, his mind was easy regarding it ; and he would sign 
almost anything for to-morrow, provided to-day could be left 
unmolested. He was a man whom scarcely any amount of for- 
tune could have benefited permanently, and who was made to 
be ruined, to cheat small tradesmen, to be the victim of astuter 
sharpers : to be niggardly and reckless, and as destitute of 
honesty as the people who cheated him, and a dupe, chiefly be- 
cause he was too mean to be a successful knave. He had told 
more lies in his times, and undergone more baseness of strata- 
gem in order to stave off a small debt, or to swindle a poor 
creditor, than would have sufficed to make a fortune for a 
braver rogue. He was abject and a shuffler in the very height 
of his prosperity. Had he been a Crown Prince — he could not 
have been more weak, useless, dissolute or ungrateful. He 
could not move through life except leaning on the arm of some- 
body ; and yet he never had an agent but he mistrusted him ; 
and marred any plans which might be arranged for his benefit, 
by secretly acting against the people whom he employed. 
Strong knew Clavering, and judged him quite correctly. It 
was not as friends that this pair met ; but the Chavalier worked 
for his principal, as he would when in the army have pursued a 
harassing march, or undergone his part in the danger and 
privations of a siege ; because it was his duty, and because he 
had agreed to it. “What is it he wants ?” thought the two 
officers of the Shepherd’s Inn garrison, when the Baronet came 
among them. 

His pale face expressed extreme anger and irritation. “ So, 


444 


PENDENNIS. 


sir,” he said, addressing Altamont, “you’ve been at your old 
tricks.” 

“ Which of ’um ? ” asked Altamont, with a sneer. 

“ You have been at the Rouge et Noir : you were there last 
night,” cried the Baronet. 

“How do you know, — were you there ? ” the other said. “ I 
was at the Club : but it wasn’t on the colors I played, — ask the 
Captain, — I’ve been telling him of it. It was with the bones. 
It was at hazard, Sir Francis, upon my word and honor it was ; ” 
and he looked at the Baronet with a knowing humorous mock 
humility, which only seemed to make the other more angry. 

“ What the deuce do I care, sir, how a man like you loses 
his money, and whether it is at hazard or roulette ? ” screamed 
the Baronet, with a multiplicity of oaths, and at the top of his 
voice. “ What I will not have, sir, is that you should use my 
name, or couple it with yours. — Damn him, Strong, why don’t 
you keep him in better order ! I tell you he has gone and used 
my name again, sir, — drawn a bill upon me, and lost the money 
on the table— -I can’t stand it — I won’t stand it. Flesh and 
blood won’t bear it — Do you know how much I’ve paid for you, 
sir? ” 

“ This was only a very little ’un, Sir Francis — only fifteen 
pound, Captain Strong, they wouldn’t stand another : and it 
oughtn’t to anger you, Governor. Why it’s so trifling I did not 
even mention it to Strong, — did I now, Captain ? I protest it 
had quite slipped my memory, and all on account of that con- 
founded liquor I took.” 

“ Liquor or no liquor, sir, it is no business of mine. I don’t 
care what you drink, or where you drink it — only it sha’n’t be 
in my house. And I will not have you breaking into my 
house of a night, and a fellow like you intruding himself on my 
company : how dared you show yourself in Grosvenor Place 
last night, sir, — and — and what do you suppose my frie'nds 
must think of me when they see a man of your sort walking 
into my dining-room uninvited, and drunk, and calling for 
liquor as if you were the master of the house.” 

“ They’ll tjrink you know some very queer sort of people, I 
dare say,” Altamont said with impenetrable good-humor. 
“ Look here, Baronet, I apologize ; on my honor I do, and ain’t 
an apology enough between two gentlemen ? It was a sfrong 
measure I own, walking into your cuddy, and calling for drink 
as if I was the Captain : but I had had too much before, you 
see, that’s why I wanted some more ; nothing can be more 
simple — and it was because they wouldn’t give me no more 


PENDENNIS. 


445 


money upon your name at the Black and Red, that I thought I 
would come down and speak to you about it. To refuse me 
was nothing : but to refuse a bill drawn on you that have been 
such a friend to the shop, and are a Baronet and a member of 
parliament, and a gentleman and no mistake — Damme, it’s un- 
grateful.” 

“ By heavens if ever you do it again — If ever you dare to 
show yourself in my house ; or give my name at a gambling- 
house or at any other house, by Jove — at any other house — or 
give any reference at all to me, or speak to me in the street, by 
Gad, or anywhere else until I speak to you — I’ll disclaim you 
altogether — I won’t give you another shilling.” 

“ Governor, don’t be provoking,” Altamont said, surlily. 
“ Don’t talk to me about daring to do this thing or t’other, or 
when my dander is up it’s the very thing to urge me on. I 
oughtn’t to have come last night, I know I oughtn’t : but I told 
you I was drunk, and that ought to be sufficient between gentle- 
man and gentleman.” 

“You a gentleman ! dammy, sir,” said the Baronet, “how 
dares a fellow like you to call himself a gentleman ? ” 

“ I ain’t a baronet, I know,” growled the other ; “ and I’ve 
forgotten how to be a gentleman almost now, but — but I was 
one once, and my father was one, and I’ll not have this sort of 
talk from you, Sir F. Clavering, that’s flat. I want to go abroad 
again. Why don’t you come down with the money, and let me 
go ? Why the devil are you to be rolling in riches, and me to 
have none ? Why should you have a house and table covered 
with plate, and me be in a garret here in this beggarly Shep- 
herd’s Inn ? We’re partners, ain’t we ? I’ve as good a right 
to be rich as you have, haven’t I ? Tell the story to Strong 
here, if you like ; and ask him to be umpire between us. I don’t 
mind letting my secret out to a man that won’t split. Look 
here, Strong — perhaps you guess the story already — the fact is, 
me and the Governor ” — 

“ D — , hold your tongue,” shrieked out the Baronet in a 
fury. “ You shall have the money as soon as I can get it. 1 
ain’t made of money. I’m . so pressed and badgered, I don’t 
know where to turn. I shall go mad ; by Jove, I shall. I wish 
I was dead, for I’m the most miserable brute alive. I say, Mr. 
Altamont, don’t mind me. When I’m out of health — and I’m 
devilish bilious this morning — hang me, I abuse everybody, and 
don’t know what I say. Excuse me if I’ve offended you. I — 
I’ll try and get that little business done. Strong shall try. 
Upon my word he shall. And I say, Strong, my boy, I want to 
speak to you. Come into the office for a minute.” 


446 


PENDENNIS. 


Almost all Clavering’s assaults ended in this ignominious 
way, and in a shameful retreat. Altamont sneered after the 
Baronet as he left the room, and entered into the office, to talk 
privately with his factotum. 

“ What is the matter now ? ” the latter asked of him. “It’s 
the old story ; I suppose.” 

“ D — it, yes,” the Baronet said. “ I dropped two hundred 
in ready money at . the Little Coventry last night, and gave a 
check for three hundred more. On her ladyship’s bankers, 
too, for to-morrow ; and I must meet it, for there’ll be the deuce 
to pay else. The last time she paid my play-debts, I swore I 
would not touch a dice-box again, and she’ll keep her word, 
Strong, and dissolve partnership, if I go on. I wish I had 
three hundred a year, and was away. At a German watering- 
place you can do devilish well with three hundred a year. But 
my habits are so d — reckless ; I wish I was in the Serpentine. 
I wish I was dead, by Gad I wish I was. I wish I had never 
touched those confounded bones. I had such a run of luck 
last night, with five for the main, and seven to five all night, 
until those ruffians wanted to pay me with Altamont’s bill upon 
me. The luck turned from that minute. Never held the box 
again for three mains, and came away cleared out, leaving that 
infernal check behind me. How shall I pay it ? Blackland 
won’t hold it over. Hulker and Bullock will write about it 
directly to her ladyship. By Jove, Ned, I’m the most miser- 
able brute in all England.” 

It was necessary for Ned to devise some plan to console the 
Baronet under this pressure of grief ; and no doubt he found 
the means of procuring a loan for his patron, for he was closeted 
at Mr. Campion’s offices that day for some time. Altamont had 
once more a guinea or two in his pocket, with a promise of a 
farther settlement ; and the Baronet had no need to wish him- 
self dead for the next two or three months at least. And 
Strong, putting together what he had learned from the Colonel 
and Sir Francis, began to form in his own mind a pretty accu- 
rate opinion as to the nature of the tie which bound the two 
men together. 


PENDENNIS. 


447 


CHAPTER XLIV. 

A CHAPTER OF CONVERSATIONS. 

Every day, after the entertainments at Grosvenor Place and 
Greenwich, of which we have seen Major Pendennis partake, 
the worthy gentleman’s friendship and cordiality for the Claver- 
ing family seemed to increase. His calls were frequent ; his 
attentions to the lady of the house unremitting. An old man 
about town, he had the good-fortune to be received in many 
houses, at which a lady of Lady Clavering’s distinction ought 
also to be seen. Would her ladyship not like to be present at 
the grand entertainment at Gaunt House ? There was to be a 
very pretty breakfast ball at Viscount Marrowfat’s, at Fulham. 
Everybody was to be there (including august personages of the 
highest rank), and there was to be a Watteau quadrille, in which 
Miss Amory would surely look charming. To these and other 
amusements the obsequious old gentleman kindly offered to 
conduct Lady Clavering, and was also ready to make himself 
useful to the Baronet in any way agreeable to the latter. 

In spite of his present station and fortune, the world per- 
sisted in looking rather coldly upon Clavering, and strange sus- 
picious rumors followed him about. He was blackballed at two 
clubs in succession. In the House of Commons, he only con- 
versed with a few of the most disreputable members of that 
famous body, having a happy knack of choosing bad society, 
and adapting himself naturally to it, as other people do to the 
company of their betters. To name all the senators with whom 
Clavering consorted, would be invidious. We may mention 
only a few. There was Captain Raff, the honorable member for 
Epsom, who retired after the last Goodwood races, having ac- 
cepted, as Mr. Hotspur, the whip of the party, said, a mission 
to the Levant ; there was Hustingson, the patriotic member for 
Islington, whose voice is never heard now denunciating corrup- 
tion, since his appointment to the Governorship of Coventry 
Island ; there was Bob Freeny, of the Booterstown Freenys, 
who is a dead shot, and of whom we therefore wish to speak 
with every respect ; and of all these gentlemen, with whom in 
the course of his professional duty Mr. Hotspur had to confer, 
there was none for whom he had a more thorough contempt 
and dislike than for Sir Francis Clavering, the representative 


PENDENNIS . 


448 

of an ancient race, who had sat for their own borough of Clav- 
ering time out of mind in the House. “ If that man is wanted 
for a division,” Hotspur said, “ ten to one he is to be found in 
a hell. He was educated in the Fleet, and he has not heard 
the end of Newgate yet, take my word for it. He’ll muddle 
away the Begum’s fortune at thimble-rig, be caught picking 
pockets, and finish on board the hulks.” And if the high-born 
Hotspur, with such . an opinion of Clavering, could yet from 
professional reasons be civil to him, why should not Major Pen- 
dennis also have reasons of his own for being attentive to this 
unlucky gentleman ? 

“He has a very good cellar and a very good cook,” the 
Major said ; “ as long as he is silent he is not offensive, and he 
very seldom speaks. If he chooses to frequent gambling-tables, 
and lose his money to blacklegs, what matters to me ? Don’t 
look too curiously into any man’s affairs, Pen my boy ; every 
fellow has some cupboard in his house, begad, which he would 
not like you and me to peep into. Why should we try, when 
the rest of the house is open to us ? And a devilish good house, 
too, as you and I know. And if the man of the family is not all 
one could wish, the women are excellent. The Begum is not 
over-refined, but as kind a woman as ever lived, and devilish 
clever too ; and as for the little Blanche, you know my opinion 
about her, you rogue ; you know my belief is that she is sweet 
on you, and would have you for the asking. But you are grow- 
ing such a great man, that I suppose you won’t be content 
under a Duke’s daughter — Hey, sir ? I recommend you to ask 
one of them, and try.” 

Perhaps Pen was somewhat intoxicated by his success in 
the world ; and it may also have entered into the young man’s 
mind (his uncle’s perpetual hints serving not a little to encour- 
age the notion) that Miss Amory was tolerably well disposed 
to renew the little flirtation which had been carried on in the 
early days of both of them, by the banks of the rural Brawl. 
But he was little disposed to marriage, he said, at that moment, 
and, adopting some of his uncle’s worldly tone, spoke rather 
contemptuously of the institution, and in favor of a bachelor 
life. 

“You are very happy, sir,” said he, “ and you get on very 
well alone, and so do I. With a wife at my side, I should lose 
my place in society ; and I don’t, for my part, much fancy re- 
tiring into the country with a Mrs. Pendennis ; or taking my 
wife into lodgings to be waited upon by the servant-of-all-work. 
The period of my little illusions is over. You cured me of my 


PENDENNIS. 


449 


first love, who certainly was a fool, and would have had a fool 
for her husband, and a very sulky discontented husband too if she 
had taken me. We young fellows live fast, sir ; and I feel as 
old at five-and-twenty as many of the old fo the old bache- 

lors — whom I see in the bow-window at Bays’s. Don’t look of- 
fended, I only mean that I am blase about love matters, and 
that I could no more fan myself into a flame for Miss Amory 
now, than I could adore Lady Mirabel over again. I wish I 
could ; I rather like Sir Mirabel for his infatuation about her, 
and think his passion is the most respectable part of his life.” 

“ Sir Charles Mirabel was always a theatrical man, sir,” the 
Major said, annoyed that his nephew should speak flippantly of 
any person of Sir Charles’s rank and station. “ He has been 
occupied with theatricals since his early days. He acted at 
Carlton House when he was Page to the Prince ; — he has been 
mixed up with that sort of thing : he could afford to marry 
whom he chooses ; and Lady Mirabel is a most respectable 
woman, received everywhere — everywhere, mind. The Duch- 
ess of Connaught receives her, Lady Rockminster receives her 
— it doesn’t become young fellows to speak lightly of people in 
that station. There’s not a more respectable woman in Eng- 
land than Lady Mirabel : — and the old fogies, as you call 
them, at Bays’s, are some of the first gentlemen in England, of 
whom you youngsters had best learn a little manners, and a 
little breeding, and a little modesty.” And the Major began 
to think that Pen was growing exceedingly pert and conceited, 
and that the world made a great deal too much of him. 

The Major’s anger amused Pen. He studied his uncle’s 
peculiarities with -a constant relish, and was always in a good- 
humor with his worldly old Mentor. “ I am a youngster of fif- 
teen years standing, sir,” he said, adroitly, “ and if you think 
that we are disrespectful, you should see those of the present 
generation. A protege of yours came to breakfast with me 
the other day. You told me to ask him, and I did it to please 
you. We had a day’s sights together, and dined at the club, 
and went to the play. He said the wine at the Polyanthus 
was not so good as Ellis’s wine at Richmond, smoked Warring- 
ton’s Cavendish after breakfast, and when I gave him a sover- 
eign as a farewell token, said he had plenty of them, but would 
take it to show he wasn’t proud.” 

“ Did he ? — did you ask young Clavering ? ” cried the Major, 
appeased at once — “fine boy, rather wild, but a fine boy — - 
parents like that sort of attention, and you can’t do better than 
pay it to our worthy friends of Grosvenor Place. And so you 

29 


PEND ENNIS. 


45 ° 

took him to the play and tipped him ? That was right, sir, that 
was right : ” with which Mentor quitted Telemachus, thinking 
that the young men were not so very bad, and that he should 
make something of that fellow yet. 

As Master Clavering grew into years and stature, he be- 
came too strong for the authority of his fond parents and gov- 
erness ; and rather governed them than permitted himself to 
be led by their orders. With his papa he was silent and sulky, 
seldom making his appearance, however, in the neighborhood 
of that gentleman ; with his mamma he roared and fought when 
any contest between them arose as to the gratification of his 
appetite, or other wish of his heart ; and in his disputes with 
his governess over his books, he kicked that quiet creature’s 
shins so fiercely, that she was entirely overmastered and sub- 
dued by him. And he would have so treated his sister 
Blanche, too, and did on one or two occasions attempt to pre- 
vail over her ; but she showed an immense resolution and spirit 
on her part, and boxed his ears so soundly, that he forbore 
from molesting Miss Amory, as he did the governess and his 
mamma, and his mamma’s maid. 

At length, when the family came to London, Sir Francis 
gave forth his opinion, that “ the little beggar had best be sent 
to school.” Accordingly the young son and- heir of the house 
of Clavering was despatched to the Rev. Otto Rose’s establish- 
ment at Twickenham, where young noblemen and gentlemen 
were received preparatory to their introduction to the great 
English public schools. 

It is not our intention to follow Master ’Clavering in his 
scholastic career ; the paths to the Temple of Learning were 
made more easy to him than they were to some of us of earlier 
generations. He advanced towards that fane in a carriage-and- 
four, so to speak, and might halt and take refreshment almost 
whenever he pleased. He wore varnished boots from the 
earliest period of youth, and had cambric handkerchiefs and 
lemon-colored kid gloves, of the smallest size ever manufactured 
by Privat. They dressed regularly at Mr. Rose’s to come down 
to dinner ; the young gentlemen had shawl dressing-gowns, 
fires in their bedrooms, horse and carriage exercise occasionally, 
and oil for their hair. Corporal punishment was altogether 
dispensed with by the Principal, who thought that moral dis- 
cipline was entirely sufficient to lead youth ; and the boys were 
so rapidly advanced in many branches of learning, that they 
acquired the art of drinking spirits and smoking cigars, even 


PEND ENNIS. 


45 1 

before they were old enough to enter a public school. Young 
Frank Clavering stole his father’s Havanas, and conveyed 
them to school, or smoked them in the stables, at a surprisingly 
early period of life, and at ten years old drank his champagne 
almost as stoutly as any whiskered cornet of dragoons could 
do. 

When this interesting youth came home for his vacations, 
Major Pendennis was as laboriously civil and gracious to him 
as he was to the rest of the family • although the boy had rather 
a contempt for old Wigsby, as the Major was denominated, — 
mimicked him behind his bfck, as the polite Major bowed and 
smirked to Lady Clavering or Miss Amory ; and drew rude 
caricatures, such as are designed by ingenious youths, in which 
ihe Major’s wig, his nose, his tie, &c., were represented with 
artless exaggeration. Untiring in his efforts to be agreeable, 
the Major wished that Pen, too, should take particular notice 
of this child ; incited Arthur to invite him to his chambers, to 
give him a dinner at the club, to take him to Madame Tus- 
saud’s, the Tower, the play, and so forth, and to tip him, as the 
phrase is, at the end of the day’s pleasures. Arthur, who was 
good-natured and fond of children, went through all these cere- 
monies one day ; had the boy to breakfast at the Temple, 
where he made the most contemptuous remarks regarding the 
furniture, the crockery, and the tattered state of Warrington’s 
dressing-gown ; and smoked a short pipe, and recounted the 
history of a fight between Tuffy and Long Biggings, at Rose’s, 
greatly to the edification of the two gentlemen his hosts. 

As the Major rightly predicted, Lady Clavering was very 
grateful for Arthur’s attention to the boy ; more grateful than 
the lad himself, who took attentions as a matter of course, and 
very likely had more sovereigns in his pocket than poor Pen, 
who generously gave him one of his own slender stock of those 
coins. 

The Major, with the sharp eyes with which Nature endowed 
him, and with the glasses of age and experience, watched this 
boy, and surveyed his position in the family without seeming 
to be rudely curious about their affairs. But, as a country 
neighbor, one who had many family obligations to the Claver- 
ings, an old man of the world, he took occasion to find out what 
Lady Clavering’s means were, how her capital was disposed, 
and what the boy was to inherit. And setting himself to work, 
. — for what purposes will appear, no doubt, ulteriorly, — he soon 
had got a pretty accurate knowledge of Lady Clavering’s affairs 
and fortune, and of the prospects of her daughter and son. 


PENDENNIS. 


452 

The daughter was to have but a slender provision ; the bulk 
of the property was, as before has been said, to go to the son, — 
his father did not care for him or anybody else, — his mother 
was dotingly fond of him as the child of her latter days, — his 
sister disliked him. Such may be stated, in round numbers, to 
be the result of the information which Major Pendennis got. 
“ Ah ! my dear madam,” he would say, patting the head of 
the boy,” this boy may wear a baron’s coronet on his head on 
some future coronation, if matters are but managed rightly, and 
if Sir Francis Clavering would but play his cards well.” 

At this the widow Amory heaved a deep sigh. “ He plays 
only too much of his cards, Major, I’m afraid,” she said. The 
Major owned that he knew as much ; did not disguise that he 
had heard of Sir Francis Clavering’s unfortunate propensity 
to play ; pitied Lady Clavering sincerely ; but spoke with such 
genuine sentiment and sense, that her ladyship, glad to find a 
person of experience to whom she could confide her grief and 
condition, talked about them pretty unreservedly to Major 
Pendennis, and was eager to have his advice and consolation. 
Major Pendennis became the Begum’s confidant and house- 
friend, and as a mother, a wife, and a capitalist, she consulted 
him. 

He gave her to understand (showing at the same time a 
great deal of respectful sympathy) that he was acquainted with 
some of the circumstances of her first unfortunate marriage, 
and with even the person of her late husband, whom he re- 
membered in Calcutta — when she was living in seclusion with 
her father. The poor lady, with tears of shame more than of 
grief in her eyes, told her version of her story. Going back 
a child to India after two years at a European school, she had 
met Amory, and foolishly married him. “ Oh, you don’t know 
how miserable that man made me,” she said, “ or what a life 
I passed betwixt him and my father. Before I saw him I had 
never seen a man except my father’s clerks and native servants. 
You know we didn’t go into society in India on account of 

” (“ I know,” said Major Pendennis, with a bow). “ I 

was a wild, romantic child, my head was full of novels which 
I’d read at school — I listened to his wild stories and adventures, 
for he was a daring fellow, and I thought he talked beautifully 
thosS calm nights on the passage out, when he used to # * * 
Well, I married him, and I was wretched from that day — 
wretched with my father, whose character you know, Major 
Pendennis, and I won’t speak of : but he wasn’t a good man, 
sir, — neither to my poor mother, nor to me, except that he left 


PENDENNIS. 


453 


me his money, — nor to no one else that I ever heard of : and 
he didn’t do many kind actions in his lifetime, I’m afraid. And 
as for Amory, he was almost worse ; he was a spendthrift when 
my father was close : he drank dreadfully, and was furious 
when in that way. He wasn’t in any way a good or faithful 
husband to me, Major Pendennis ; and if he’d died in the jail 
before his trial, instead of afterwards, he would have saved me 
a deal of shame and of unhappiness since, sir.” Lady Claver- 
ing added : “For perhaps I should not have married at all if I 
had not been so anxious to change his horrid name, and I have 
not been happy in my second husband, as I suppose you know, 
sir. Ah, Major Pendennis, I’ve got money to be sure, and I’m 
a lady, and people fancy I’m very happy, but I ain’t. We all 
have our cares, and griefs, and troubles : and many’s the day 
that I sit down to one of my grand dinners with an aching 
heart, and many a night do I lay awake on my fine bed, a great 
deal more unhappy than the maid that makes it. For I’m not 
a happy woman, Major, for all the world says ; and envies the 
Begum her diamonds, and carriages, and the great company 
that comes to my house. I’m not happy in my husband ; I’m 
not happy in my daughter. She ain’t a good girl like that dear 
Laura Bell at Fairoaks. She’s cost me many a tear though 
you don’t see ’em ; and she sneers at her mother because I 
haven’t had learning and that. How should I ? I was brought 
up amongst natives till I was twelve, and went back to India 
when I was fourteen. Ah, Major, I should have been a good 
woman if I had had a good husband. And now I must go up 
stairs and wipe my eyes, for they’re red with cryin’. And 
Lady Rockminster’s a-comin’, and we’re goin’ to ’ave a drive 
in the Park.” And when Lady Rockminster made her appear- 
ance, there was not a trace of tears or vexation on Lady Cla- 
vering’s face, but she was full of spirits, and bounced out with 
her blunders and talk, and murdered the king’s English with 
the utmost liveliness and good-humor. 

“ Begad, she is not such a bad woman ! ” the Major thought 
within himself. “ She is not refined, certainly, and calls 
‘ Apollo ’ ‘ Apoller ; ’ but she has some heart, and I like that 
sort of thing, and a devilish deal of money, too. Three stars in 
India Stock to her name, begad ! which that young cub is to 
have — is he ? ” And he thought how he should like to see a 
little of the money transferred to Miss Blanche, and, better 
still, one of those stars shining in the name of Mr. Arthur 
Pendennis. 

Still bent upon pursuing his schemes, whatsoever they 


454 


PE ND EiVNIS. 


might me, the old negotiator took the privilege of his intimacy 
and age, to talk in a kindly and fatherly manner to Miss Blanche, 
when he found occasion to see her alone. He came in so fre- 
quently at luncheon-time, and became so familiar with the 
ladies, that they did not even hesitate to quarrel before him : 
and Lady Clavering, whose tongue was loud, and temper brusque, 
had many a battle with the Sylphide in the family friend’s 
presence. Blanche’s wit seldom failed to have the mastery in 
these encounters, and the keen barbs of her arrows drove her 
adversary discomfited away. “ I am an old fellow,” the Major 
said ; “ I have nothing to do in life. I have my eyes open. I 
keep good counsel. I am the friend .of both of you ; and if you 
choose to quarrel before me, why I sha’n’t tell any one. But you 
are two good people, and I intend to make it up between you. 
I have between lots of people — husbands and wives, fathers 
and sons, daughters and mammas, before this. I like it ; I’ve 
nothing else to do.” 

One day, then, the old diplomatist entered Lady Clavering’s 
drawing-room, just as the latter quitted it, evidently in a high 
state of indignation, and ran past him up the stairs to her own 
apartments. “ She couldn’t speak to him now,” she said ; “ she 
was a great deal too angry with that — that — that little wicked ” 
— anger choked the rest of the words, or prevented their utter- 
ance until Lady Clavering had passed out of hearing. 

“ My dear good Miss Ainory,” the Major said, entering the 
drawing-room, “ I see what is happening. You and mamma 
have been disagreeing. Mothers and daughters disagree in the 
best families. It was but last week that I healed up a quarrel 
between Lady Clapperton and her daughter Lady Claudia. 
Lady Lear and her eldest daughter have not spoken for fourteen 
years. Kinder and more worthy people than these I never 
knew in the whole course of my life ; for everybody but each 
other admirable. But they can’t live together : they oughtn’t to 
live together : and I wish, my dear creature, with all my soul, 
that I could see you with an establishment of your own — for 
there is no woman in London who could conduct one better — 
with your own establishment, making your own home happy.” 

“ I am not very happy in this one,” said the Sylphide ; 
“ and the stupidity of mamma is enough to provoke a saint.” 

“ Precisely so ; you are not suited to one another. Your 
mother committed one fault in early life — or was it Nature, my 
dear, in your case ? — she ought not to have educated you. You 
ought not to have been bred up to become the refined and in- 
tellectual being you are, surrounded, as I own you are, by those 


PENDENNIS. 


455 

who have not your genius or your refinement. Your place 
would be to lead in the most brilliant circles, not to follow and 
take a second place in any society. 1 have watched you, Miss 
Amory : you are ambitious ; and your proper sphere is command. 
You ought to shine ; and you never can in this house, I know it. 
I hope I shall see you in another and a happier one, some day, 
and the mistress of it.” 

The Sylphide shrugged her lily shoulders with a look of 
scorn. “ Where is the Prince, and where is the palace, Major 
Pendennis ? ” she said. “ I am ready. But there is no ro- 
mance in the world now, no real affection.” 

“ No, indeed,” said the Major, with the most sentimental 
and simple air which he could muster. 

“Not that I know anything about it,” said Blanche, casting 
her eyes down, “except what I have read in novels.” 

“Of course not,” Major Pendennis cried ; “ how should you, 
my dear young lady? and novels ain’t true, as you remark ad- 
mirably, and there is no romance left in the world. Begad, I 
wish I was a young fellow like my nephew.” 

“ And what,” continued Miss Amory, musing, “ what are 
the men whom we see about at the balls every night — dancing 
guardsmen, penniless Treasury clerks — boobies ! If I had my 
brother’s fortune, I might have such an establishment as you 
promise me — but with my name, and with my little means, what 
am I to look to ? A country parson, or a barrister in a street 
near Russell Square, or a captain in a dragoon regiment, who 
will take lodgings for me, and come home from the mess tipsy 
and smelling of smoke like Sir Francis Clavering. That is how 
we girls are destined to end life. Oh, Major P^idennis, I am 
sick of London, and of balls, and of young dandies with their 
chin-tips, and of the insolent great ladies wfio know us one 
day and cut us the next — and of the world altogether. I should 
like to leave it and go into a convent, that I should. I shall 
never find anybody to understand me. And I live here as 
much alone in my family and in the world, as if I were in a cell 
locked up forever. I wish there were Sisters of Charity here, 
and that I could be one and catch the plague, and die of it — I 
wish to quit the world. I am not very old : but I am tired, I 
have suffered so much — I’ve been so disillusionated — I’m 
weary, I’m weary — oh ! .that the Angel of Death would come 
and beckon me away ! ” 

This speech may be interpreted as follows. A few nights 
since a great lady, Lady Flamingo, had cut Miss Amory and 
Lady Clavering. She was quite mad because she could not 


PENDENNIS. 


45 6 

get an invitation to Lady Drum’s ball : it was the end of the 
season and nobody had proposed to her : she had made no 
sensation at all, she who was so much cleverer than any girl of 
the year, and of the young ladies forming her special circle. 
Dora who had but five thousand pounds, Flora who had nothing, 
and Leonora who had red hair, were going to be married, and 
nobody had come for Blanche Amory ! 

“ You judge wisely about the world, and about your position, 
my dear Miss Blanche,” the Major said. “ The Prince don’t 
marry nowadays, as you say : unless the Princess has a doosid 
deal of money in the funds, or is a lady of his own rank. — The 
young folks of the great families marry into the great families : 
if they haven’t fortune they have each other’s shoulders, to 
push on in the world, which is pretty nearly as good. — A girl 
with your fortune can scarcely hope for a great match : but a 
girl with your genius and your admirable tact and fine manners, 
with a clever husband by her side, may make any place for her- 
self in the world. — We are grown doosid republican. Talent 
ranks with birth and wealth now, begad : and a clever man 
with a clever wife may take any place they please.” 

Miss Amory did not of course in the least understand what 
Major Pendennis meant. — Perhaps she thought over circum- 
stances in her mind and asked herself, could he be a negotiator 
for a former suitor of hers, and could he mean Pen ? No, it 
was impossible. — He had been civil, but nothing more. — So she 
said, laughing, “ Who is the clever man, and when will you 
bring him to me, Major Pendennis ? I am dying to see him.” 

At this moment a servant threw open the door, and an- 
nounced Mr.#Henry Foker : at which name, and the appear- 
ance of our friend, both the lady and the gentleman burst out 
laughing. 

“ That is not the man,” Major Pendennis said. “ He is 
engaged to his cousin, Lord Gravesend’s daughter. — Good-by, 
my dear Miss Amory.” 

Was Pen growing worldly, and should a man not get the 
experience of the world and lay it to his account ? “ He felt, 

for his part,” as he said, “ that he was growing very old very soon. 
How this town forms and changes us,” he said once to Wai- 
rington. Each had come in from his flight’s amusement ; and 
Pen was smoking his pipe, and recounting, as his habit was, to 
his mend, the observations and adventures of the evening just 
past. ‘ How I am changed,” he said, “ from the simpleton 
boy at Fairoaks, who was fit to break his heart about his first 


PENDENNIS. 


457 . 


love ! Lady Mirabel had a reception to-night, and was as 
grave and collected as if she had been born a Duchess, and 
had never seen a trap-door in her life. ' She gave me the honor 
of a conversation, and patronized me about ‘Walter Lorraine/ 
quite kindly.” 

“ What condescension,” broke in Warrington. 

“Wasn’t it?” Pen said, simply — at which the other burst 
out laughing according to his wont. “ Is it possible,” he said, * 
“ that anybody should think of patronizing the eminent author 
of ‘ Walter Lorraine ? ’ ” 

“You laugh at both of us,” Pen said, blushing a little — “ I 
■was coming to that myself. She told me that she had not read 
the book (as indeed I believe she never read a book in her life), 
but that Lady Rockminster had, and that the Duchess of Con- 
naught pronounced it to be very clever. In that case, I said I 
should die happy, for that to please those two ladies was in 
fact the great aim of my existence, and having their approba- 
tion, of course I need look for no other. Lady Mirabel looked 
at me solemnly out of her fine eyes, and said, ‘ Oh, indeed/ as 
if she understood me ; and then she asked me whether I went 
to the Duchess’s Thursday, and when I said No, hoped she 
should see me there, and that I must try and get there, every- 
body went there — everybody who was in society : and then we 
talked of the new ambassador from Timbuctoo, and how he 
was better than the old one ; and how Lady Mary Billington 
was going to marry a clergyman quite below her in rank ; and 
how Lord and Lady Ringdove had fallen out three months 
after their marriage about Tom Pouter of the Blues, Lady 
Ringdove’s cousin — and so forth. From the gravity of that 
woman you would have fancied she had been born in a palace, 
and lived all the seasons of her life in Belgrave Square.” 

“ And you, I suppose you took your part in the conversa- 
tion pretty well, as the descendant of the Earl your father, and 
the heir of Fairoaks Castle?” Warrington said. “Yes, I 
remember reading of the festivities which occurred when you 
came of age. The Countess gave a brilliant tea soiree to the 
neighboring nobility; and the tenantry were regaled in the 
kitchen with a leg of mutton and a quart of ale. The remains 
of the banquet were distributed amongst the poor of the village, 
and the entrance to thp park was illuminated until old John 
put the candle out on retiring to rest at his usual hour.” 

“ My mother is not a countess,” said Pen, “though she has 
very good blood in her veins too — but commoner as she is, I 
have never met a peeress who was more than her peer, Mr. 


PENDENNIS. 


45 8 

George ; and if you will come to Fairoaks Castle you shall 
judge for yourself of her and of my cousin too. They are not 
so witty as the London women, but they certainly are as well- 
bred. The thoughts of women in the country are turned to 
other objects than those which occupy your London ladies. In 
the country a woman has her household and her poor, her long 
calm days and long calm evenings.” 

“ Devilish long,” Warrington said, “ and a great deal too 
calm ; I’ve tried ’em.” 

“ The monotony of that existence must be to a certain de- 
gree melancholy — like the tune of a long ballad ; and its har- 
mony grave and gentle, sad and tender : it would be unendur- 
able else. The loneliness of women in the country makes 
them of necessity soft and sentimental. Leading a life of calm 
duty, constant routine, mystic reverie, — a sort of nuns at large 
— too much gayety or laughter would jar upon their almost 
sacred quiet, and would be as out of place there as in a 
church.” 

“ Where you go to sleep over the sermon,” Warrington 
said. 

“You are a professed misogynist, and hate the sex because, 
I suspect, you know very little about them,” Mr. Pen contin- 
ued, with an air of considerable self-complacency. “ If you 
dislike the women in the country for being too slow, surely the 
London women ought to be fast enough for you. The pace of 
London life is enormous : how do people last at it, I wonder, 
— male and female ? Take a woman of the world : follow her 
course through the season ; one asks how she can survive it ? 
or if she tumbles into a sleep at the end of August, and lies 
torpid until the spring ? She goes into the world every night, 
and sits watching her marriageable daughters dancing till long 
after dawn. She has a nursery of little ones, very likely, at 
home, to whom she administers example and affection ; having 
an eye likewise to bread-and-milk, catechism, music and French, 
and roast leg of mutton at one o’clock ; she has to call upon 
ladies of her own station, either domestically or in her public 
character, in which she sits upon Charity Committees, or Ball 
Committees, or Emigration Committees, or Queen’s College 
Committees, and discharges I don’t know what more duties of 
British stateswomanship. She very likely keeps a poor-visiting 
list ; has conversations with the clergyman about soup or flan- 
nel, or proper religious teaching for the parish ; and (if she 
lives in certain districts) probably attends early church. She 
has the newspapers to read, and, at least, must know what her 


PEND ENNIS. 


459 

husband’s party is about, so as to be able to talk to her neigh- 
bor at dinner ; and it is a fact that she reads every new book 
that comes out ; for she can talk, and very smartly and well, 
about them all, and you see them all upon her drawing-room 
table. She has the cares of her household besides : — to make 
both ends meet ; to make the girls’ milliner’s bills appear not 
too dreadful to the father and paymaster of the family ; to snip 
off, in secret, a little extra article of expenditure here and there, 
and convey it, in the shape of a bank-note, to the boys at col- 
lege, or at sea ; to check the encroachments of tradesmen and 
housekeepers’ financial fallacies ; to keep upper and lower ser- 
vants from jangling with one another, and the household in 
order. Add to this, that she has a secret taste for some art or 
science, models in clay, makes experiments in chemistry, or 
plays in private on the violoncello, — and I say, without exagger- 
ation, many London ladies are doing this, — and you have a 
character before you such as our ancestors never heard of, 
and such as belongs entirely to our era and period of civiliza- 
tion. Ye gods ! how rapidly we live and grow ! In nine 
months, Mr. Paxton grows you a pine-apple as large as a port- 
manteau, whereas a little one, no bigger than a Dutch Cheese, 
took three years to attain his majority in old times ; and as the 
race of pine-apples so is the race of man. Hoiaper — what’s 
the Greek for a pine-apple, Warrington ? ” 

“ Stop, for mercy’s sake, stop with the English and before 
you come to the Greek,” Warrington cried out, laughing. “ I 
never heard you make such a long speech, or was aware that 
you had penetrated so deeply into the female mysteries. Who 
taught you all this, and into whose boudoirs and nurseries have 
you been peeping, whilst I was smoking my pipe, and reading 
my book, lying on my straw bed ? ” 

“ You are on the bank, old boy, content to watch the waves 
tossing in the winds, and the struggles of others at sea,” Pen 
said. “ I am in the stream now, and by Jove I like it. How 
rapidly we go down it, hey ? — strong and feeble, old and young 
— the metal pitchers and the earthen pitchers — the pretty little 
china boat swims gayly till the big bruised brazen one bumps 
him and sends him down — eh, vogue la galere ! — you see a 
man sink in the race, and say good-by to him — look, he has 
only dived under the other fellow’s legs, and comes up shak- 
ing his poll, and striking out ever so far ahead. Eh, vogue 
la galire, I say. It’s good sport, Warrington — not winning 
merely, but playing.” 

“ Well, go in and win, young ’un. I’ll sit and mark the 


PENDENNIS. 


460 

game,” Warrington said, surveying the ardent young fellow 
with an almost fatherly pleasure. “ A generous fellow plays 
for the play, a sordid one for the stake ; an old fogy sits by 
and smokes his pipe of tranquillity, while Jack and Tom are 
pummelling each other in the ring. 

“Why don’t you come in, George, and have a turn with the 
gloves? You are big enough and strong enough,” Pen said. 
“ Dear old boy, you are worth ten of me.” 

“ You are not quite as tall as Goliath, certainly,” the other 
answered, with a laugh that was rough and yet tender. “And 
as for me, I am disabled. I had a fatal hit in early life. I 
will tell you about it some day. You may, too, meet with your 
master. Don’t be too eager, or too confident or too worldly 
my boy.” 

Was Pendennis becoming worldly, or only seeing the world, 
or both ? and is a man very wrong for being after all only a 
man ? Which is the most reasonable, and does his duty* best : 
he who stands aloof from the struggle of life, calmly contemplat- 
ing it, or he who descends to the ground, and takes his part in 
the contest? “ That philosopher,” Pen said, “had held a great 
place amongst the leaders of the world, and enjoyed to the 
full what it had to give of rank and riches, renown and pleas- 
ure, who came, weary-hearted, out of it, and said that all was 
vanity and vexation of spirit. Many a teacher of those whom 
we reverence, and who steps out of his carriage up to his carved 
cathedral place, shakes his lawn ruffles over the velvet cushion, 
and cries out that the whole struggle is an accursed one, and 
the works of the world are evil. Many a conscience-stricken 
mystic flies from it altogether, and shuts himself out from it 
within convent walls (real or spiritual), whence he can only 
look up to the sky, and contemplate the heaven out of which 
there is no rest, and no good. 

“ But the earth, where our feet are, is the work of the same 
Power as the immeasurable blue yonder, in which the future 
lie^into which we would peer. Who ordered toil as the condi- 
tion of life, ordered weariness, ordered sickness, ordered pov- 
erty, failure, success — to this man a foremost place, to the 
other a nameless struggle with the crowd — to that a shameful 
fall, or paralyzed limb, or sudden accident — to each some work 
upon the ground he stands on, until he is laid beneath it.” 
While they were talking, the dawn came shining through 
the windows of the room, and Pen threw them open to 
receive the fresh morning air. “Look, George,” said he; 


PENDENNIS. 


461 


“ look and see the sun rise : he sees the laborer on his way 
a-field ; the work-girl plying her poor needle ; the lawyer at his 
desk, perhaps ; the beauty smiling asleep upon her pillow of 
down; or the jaded reveller reeling to bed; or the fevered 
patient tossing on it ; or the doctor watching by it, over the 
throes of the mother for the child that is to be born into the 
world ; — to be born and to take his part in the suffering and 
struggling, the tears and laughter, the crime, remorse, love, 
folly, sorrow, rest.” 


CHAPTER XLV. 

MISS amory's partners. 

The noble Henry Foker, of whom we have lost sight for a 
few pages, has been in the meanwhile occupied, as we might 
suppose a man of his constancy would be, in the pursuit and 
indulgence of his all-absorbing passion of love. 

He longed after her, and cursed the fate which separated 
him from her. When Lord Gravesend’s family retired to the 
country (his lordship leaving his proxy with the venerable Lord 
Bagwig), Harry still remained lingering on in London, certainly 
not much to the sorrow of Lady Ann, to whom he was affianced, 
and who did not in the least miss him. Wherever Miss Clav- 
ering went, this infatuated young fellow continued to follow 
her ; and being aware that his engagement to his cousin was 
known in the world, he was forced to make a mystery of his 
passion, and confine it to his own breast, so that it was so pent 
in there and pressed down, that it is a wonder he did not ex- 
plode some day with the stormy secret, and perish collapsed 
after the outburst. 

There had been a grand entertainment at Gaunt House on 
one beautiful evening in June, and the next day’s journals con- 
tained almost two columns of the names of the most closely 
printed nobility and gentry who had been honored with invita- 
tions to the ball. Among the guests were Sir Francis and 
Lady Clavering and Miss Amory, for whom the indefatigable 
Major Pendennis had procured an invitation, and our two 
young friends Arthur and Harry. Each exerted himself, and 
danced a great deal with Miss Blanche. As for the worthy 
Major, he assumed the charge of Lady Clavering, and took 


PENDENNIS . 


462 

care to introduce her to that department of the mansion where 
her ladyship specially distinguished herself, namely, the refresh- 
ment-room, where, amongst pictures of Titian and Giorgione, 
and regal portraits of Vandyke and Reynolds, and enormous 
salvers of gold and silver, and pyramids of large flowers, and 
constellations of wax candles — in a manner perfectly regardless 
of expense, in a word — a supper was going on all night. Of 
how many creams, jellies, salads, peaches, white soups, grapes, 
patds, galantines, cups of tea, champagne, and so forth, Lady 
Clavering partook, it does not become us to say. How much 
the Major suffered as he followed the honest woman about, 
calling to the solemn male attendants and lovely servant-maids, 
and administering to Lady Clavering’s various wants with 
admirable patience, nobody knows : — he never confessed. He 
never allowed his agony to appear on his countenance in the 
least ; but with a constant kindness brought plate after plate to 
the Begum. 

Mr. Wagg counted up all the dishes of which Lady Claver- 
ing partook as long as he could count (but as he partook very 
freely himself of champagne during the evening, his powers of 
calculation were not to be trusted at the close of the entertain- 
ment), and he recommended Mr. Honeyman, Lady Steyne’s 
medical man, to look carefully after the Begum, and to call and 
get news of her ladyship the next day. 

Sir Francis Clavering made his appearance, and skulked for 
a while about the magnificent rooms ; but the company and the 
splendor which he met there were not to the Baronet’s taste, 
and after tossing off a tumbler of wine or two at the buffet, he 
quitted Gaunt House for the neighborhood of Jermyn Street, 
where his friends Loder, Punter, little Moss Abrams, and Cap- 
tain Skewball were assembled at the familiar green table. In 
the rattle of the box, and of their agreeable conversation, Sir 
Francis’s spirits rose to their accustomed point of feeble 
hilarity. 

Mr. Pynsent, who had asked Miss Amory to dance, came 
up on one occasion to claim her hand, but scowls of recognition 
having already passed between him and Mr. Arthur Pendennis 
in the dancing-room, Arthur suddenly rose up and claimed 
Miss Amory as his partner for the present dance, on which Mr. 
Pynsent, biting his lips and scowling yet more savagely, with- 
drew with a profound bow, saying that he gave up his claim. 
There are some men who are always falling in one’s way in life. 
Pynsent and Pen had this view of each other ; and regarded 
each other accordingly. 


PENDENNIS . 


463 

“ What a confounded conceited provincial fool that is ! ” 
thought the one. “ Because he has written a twopenny novel 
his absurd head is turned, and a kicking would take his conceit 
out of him.” 

“ What an impertinent idiot that man is ! ” remarked the 
other to his partner. “ His soul is in Downing Street ; his 
neck-cloth is foolscap ; his hair is sand ; his legs are rulers ; 
his vitals are tape and sealing-wax ; he was a prig in his cradle; 
and never laughed since he was born, except three times at the 
same joke of his chief. I have the same liking for that man, 
Miss Amory, that I have for cold boiled veal.” Upon which 
Blanche of course remarked, that Mr. Pendennis was wicked, 
mediant , perfectly abominable, and wondered what he would say 
when her back was turned. 

“ Say ! — Say that you have the most beautiful figure and the 
slimmest waist in the world, Blanche — Miss Amory I mean. 
I beg your pardon. Another turn ; this music would make an 
alderman dance.” 

“ And you have left off tumbling when you waltz, now ? ” 
Blanche asked, archly looking up at her partner’s face. 

“ One falls and one gets up again in life, Blanche ; you 
know I used to call you so in old times, and it is the prettiest 
name in the world : besides, I have practised since then.” 

“And with a great number of partners, I’m afraid,” Blanche 
said, with a little sham sigh, and a shrug of the shoulders. 
And so in truth Mr. Pen hacl practised a good deal in this life ; 
and had undoubtedly arrived at being able to dance better. 

If Pendennis was impertinent in his talk, Foker, on the 
other hand, so bland and communicative on most occasions, 
was entirely mum and melancholy when he danced with Miss 
Amory. To clasp her slender waist was a rapture, to whirl 
round the room with her was a delirium ; but to speak to her, 
what could he say that was worthy of her ? What pearl of con- 
versation could he bring that was fit for the acceptance of such 
a Queen of love and wit as Blanche ? It was she who made 
the talk when she was in the company of this love-stricken 
partner. It was she who asked him how that dear little pony 
was, and looked at him and thanked him with such a tender 
kindness and regret, and refused the dear little pony with such 
a delicate sigh when he offered it. “ I have nobody to ride 
with in London,” she said. “ Mamma is timid, and her figure 
is not pretty on horseback. Sir Francis never goes out with 
me. He loves me like — like a step-daughter. Oh, how de- 
lightful it must be to have a father — a father, Mr. Foker ! ” 


464 


PENDENNIS. 


“ O, uncommon,” said Mr. Harry, who enjoyed that bless* 
ing very calmly, upon which, and forgetting the sentimental air 
which she had just before assumed, Blanche’s gray eyes gazed 
at Foker with such an arch twinkle, that both of them burst out 
laughing, and Harry enraptured and at his ease began to en- 
tertain her with a variety of innocent prattle — good kind simple 
Foker talk, flavored with many expressions by no means to be 
discovered in dictionaries, and relating to the personal history 
of himself or horses, or other things dear and important to 
him, or to persons in the ball-room then passing before them, 
and about whose appearance or character Mr. Harry spoke 
with artless freedom, and a considerable dash of humor. 

And it was Blanche who, when the conversation flagged, and 
the youth’s modesty came rushing back and overpowering him, 
knew how to reanimate her companion : asked him questions 
about Logwood, and whether it was a pretty place ? Whether 
he was a hunting-man, and whether he liked women to hunt ? 
(in which case she was prepared to say that she adored hunt- 
ing) — but Mr. Foker expressing his opinion against sporting 
females, and pointing out Lady Bullfinch, who happened to 
pass by, as a horse-godmother, - whom he had seen at cover with 
a cigar in her face, Blanche too expressed her detestation of 
the sports of the field, and said it would make her shudder to 
think of a dear sweet little fox being killed, on which Foker 
laughed and waltzed with renewed vigor and grace. 

And at the end of the waltz, — the last waltz they had on 
that night, — Blanche asked him about Drummington, and 
whether it was a fine house. His cousins, she had heard, were 
very accomplished : Lord Erith she had met, and which of 
his cousins was his favorite ? Was it not Lady Ann ? Yes, she 
was sure it was she : sure by his looks and his blushes. She 
was tired of dancing ; it was getting very late ; she must go to 
mamma ; — and, without another word, she sprang away from 
Harry Foker’s arm, and seized upon Pen’s, who was swag- 
gering about the dancing-room, and again said, “ Mamma, 
mamma ! — take me to mamma, dear Mr. Pendennis !.” transfix- 
ing Harry with a Parthian shot, as she fled from him. 

My Lord Steyne, with garter and ribbon, with a bald head 
and shining eyes, and a collar of red whiskers round his face, 
always looked grand upon an occasion of state ; and made a 
great effect upon Lady Clavering, when he introduced himself 
to her at the request of the obsequious Major Pendennis. 
With his own white and royal hand, he handed to her ladyship 
a glass of wine, said he had heard of her charming daughter, 


PENDENNIS . 


465 

and begged to be presented to her ; and, at this very juncture, 
Mr. Arthur Pendennis came up with the young lady on his 
arm. 

The peer made a profound bow, and Blanche the deepest 
curtsey that ever was seen. His lordship gave Mr. Arthur 
Pendennis his hand to shake ; said he read his book, which was 
very wicked and clever ; asked Miss Blanche if she had read 
it, — at which Pen blushed and winced. Why, Blanche was one 
of the heroines of the novel. Blanche, in black ringlets and a 
little altered, was the Neaera of Walter Lorraine. 

Blanche had read it : the language of the eyes expressed 
her admiration and rapture at the performance. This little play 
being achieved, the Marquis of Steyne made other two pro- 
found bows to Lady Clavering and her daughter, and passed 
on to some other of his guests at the splendid entertainment. 

Mamma and daughter were loud in their expressions of 
admiration of the noble Marquis so soon as his broad back 
was turned upon them. “ He said they made a very nice 
couple,” whispered Major Pendennis to Lady Clavering. Did 
he now really ? Mamma though they would ; Mamma was so 
flustered with the honor which had just been shown to her, and 
with other intoxicating events of the evening, that her good- 
humor knew no bounds. She laughed, she winked, and nodded 
knowingly at Pen ; she tapped him on the arm with her fan ; 
she tapped Blanche ; she tapped the Major ; — her contentment 
was boundless, and her method of showing her joy equally 
expansive. 

As the party went down the great staircase of Gaunt 
House, the morning had risen stark and clear over the black 
trees of the square ; the skies were tinged with pink ; and the 
cheeks of some of the people at the ball, — ah, how ghastly 
they looked ! That admirable and devoted Major above all, — 
who had been for hours by Lady Clavering's side, ministering 
to her and feeding her body with everything that was nice, and 
her ear with everything that was sweet and flattering, — oh ! 
what an object he was ! The rings round his eyes were of the 
color of bistre ; those orbs themselves were like the plovers’ 
eggs whereof Lady Clavering and Blanche had each tasted ; 
the wrinkles in his old face were furrowed in deep gashes ; and 
a silver stubble, like an elderly morning dew, was glittering 
on his chain, and alongside the dyed whiskers, now limp and 
out of curl. 

There he stood with admirable patience, enduring, uncom- 
plaining, a silent agony ; knowing that people could see the 

30 


PEND ENNIS. 


466 

state of his face (for could he not himself perceive the con- 
dition of others, males and females, of his own age ?) — longing 
to go to rest for hours past ; aware that suppers disagreed with 
him, and yet having eaten a little so as to keep his friend, Lady 
Clavering, in good-humor ; with twinges or rheumatism in the 
back and knees ; with weary feet burning in his varnished 
boots, — so tired, oh, so tired and longing for bed ! If man, 
struggling with hardship and bravely overcoming it, is an object 
of admiration for the gods, that Power in whose chapels the 
old Major was a faithful worshipper must have looked upwards 
approvingly upon the constancy of Pendennis’s martyrdom. 
There are sufferers in that cause as in the other: the negroes 
in the sendee of Mumbo Jumbo tattoo and drill themselves 
with burning skewers with great fortitude ; and we read that 
the priests in the service of Baal gashed themselves and bled 
freely. You who can smash the idols, do so with a good cour- 
age ; but do not be too fierce with the idolaters, — they worship 
the best thing they know. 

The Pendennises, the elder and the younger, waited with 
Lady Clavering and her daughter until her ladyship’s carriage 
was announced, when the elder’s martyrdom may be said to 
have come to an end, for the good-natured Begum insisted upon 
leaving him at his door in Bury Street ; so he took the back 
seat of the carriage, after a feeble bow or two, and speech of 
thanks, polite to the last, and resolute in doing his duty. The 
Begum waved her dumpy little hand by way of farewell to 
Arthur and Foker, and Blanche smiled languidly out upon the 
young men, thinking whether she looked very wan and green 
under her rose-colored hood, and whether it was the mirrors at 
Gaunt House, or the fatigue and fever of her own eyes, which 
made her fancy herself so pale. 

Arthur, perhaps, saw quite well how yellow Blanche looked, 
but did not attribute that pecularity of her complexion to the 
effect of the looking-glasses, or to any error in his sight or her 
own. Our young man of the world could use his eyes very 
keenly, and could see Blanche’s face pretty much as nature had 
made it. But for poor Foker it had a radiance which dazzled 
and blinded him : he could see no more faults in it than in the 
sun, which was now flaring over the house-tops. 

Amongst ‘other wicked London habits which Pen had ac- 
quired, the moralist will remark that he had got to keep very 
bad hours ; and often was going to bed at the time when sober 
country people were thinking of leaving it. Men get used to 
one hour as to another. Editors of newspapers, Covent Garden 


PENDENNIS. 


467 

market people, night cabmen and coffee-sellers, chimney-sweeps, 
and gentlemen and ladies of fashion who frequent balls, are 
often quite lively at three or four o’clock of a morning, when 
ordinary mortals are snoring. We have shown in the last 
chapter how Pen was in a brisk condition of mind at this period, 
inclined to smoke his cigar at ease, and to speak freely. 

Foker and Pen walked away from Gaunt House, then, in- 
dulging in both above amusements : or rather Pen talked, and 
Foker looked as if he wanted to say something Pen was 
sarcastic and dandyfied when he had been in the company of 
great folks ; he could not help imitating some of their airs and 
tones, and having a most lively imagination, mistook himself for 
a person of importance very easily. He rattled away, and 
attacked this person and that; sneered at Lady John Turn- 
bull’s bad French, which her ladyship will introduce into all 
conversations in spite of the sneers of everybody ; at Mrs. 
Slack Roper’s extraordinary costume and sham jewels ; at the 
old dandies and the young ones ; — at whom didn’t he sneer and 
laugh ? 

“You fire at everybody, Pen — you’re grown awful, that you 
are,” Foker said. “ Now, you’ve pulled about Blondel’s yellow 
wig, and Colchicum’s black /me, why don’t you have a shy at a 
a brown one, hay ? you know whose I mean. It got into Lady 
Clavering’s carriage.” 

“ Under my uncle’s hat ? My uncle is a martyr, Foker, my 
boy. My uncle has been doing excruciating duties all night. 
He likes to go to bed rather early. He has a dreadful headache 
if he sits up and touches supper. He always has the gout if he 
walks or stands much at a ball. He has been sitting up, and 
standing up, and supping. He has gone home to the gout and 
the headache, and for my sake. Shall I make fun of the old 
boy? no, not for Venice ! ” 

“ How do you mean that he has been doing it for your 
sake ? ” Foker asked, looking rather alarmed. 

“ Boy ! canst thou keep a secret if I impart it to thee ? ” 
Pen cried out, in high spirits. “ Art thou of good counsel ? 
Wilt thou swear ? Wilt thou be mum, or wilt thou peach ? 
Wilt thou be silent and hear, or wilt thou speak and die ? ” And 
as he spoke, flinging himself into an absurd theatrical attitude, 
the men in the cab-stand in Piccadilly wondered and grinned 
at the antics of the tw r o young swells. 

“ What the doose are you driving at ? ” Foker asked, looking 
very much agitated. 

Pen, however, did not remark this agitation much, but 


PEND ENNIS. 


468 

continued in the same bantering and excited vein. “ Henry, 
friend of my youth,” he said, “ witness of my early follies, 
though dull at thy books, yet thou art not altogether deprived 
of sense, — nay, blush not, Henrico, thou hast a good portion 
of that, and ol courage and kindness too, at the service of thy 
friends. Were I in a strait of poverty, I would come to my 
Foker’s purse. Were I in grief, I would discharge my grief 
upon his sympathizing bosom — ” 

“ Gammon, Pen — go on,” Foker said. 

“ I would, Henrico, upon thy studs, and upon thy cambric 
worked by the hands of beauty, to adorn the breast of valor ! 
Know then, friend of thy boyhood’s days, that Arthur Pen- 
dennis, of the Upper Temple, student-at-law, feels that he is 
growing lonely, and old Care is furrowing his temples, and 
Baldness is busy with his crown. Shall we stop and have a 
drop of coffee at this stall, it looks very hot and nice ? Look 
how that cabman is blowing at his saucer. No, you won’t ? 
Aristocrat ! I resume my tale. I am getting on in life. I 
have got devilish little money. I want some. I am thinking 
of getting some, and settling in life. I’m thinking of settling. 
I’m thinking of marrying, old boy. I’m thinking of becoming 
a moral man ; a steady port and sherry character : with a good 
reputation in my quartier, and a moderate establishment of two 
maids and a man — with an occasional brougham to drive out 
Mrs. Pendennis, and a house near the Parks for the accommo- 
dation of the children. Ha ! what sayest thou ? Answer thy 
friend, thou worthy child of beer. Speak, I adjure thee by all 
thy vats.” 

“ But you ain’t got any money, Pen,” said the other, still 
looking alarmed. 

“ I ain’t. No, but she ’ave. I tell thee there is gold in store 
for me — not what you call money, nursed in the lap of luxury, 
and cradled on grains, and drinking in wealth from a thousand 
mash-tubs. What do you know about money ? What is poverty 
to you, is splendor to the hardy son of the humble apothecary. 
You can’t live without an establishment, and your houses in 
town and country. A snug little house somewhere off Bel- 
gravia, a brougham for my wife, a decent cook, and a fair 
bottle of wine for my friends at home sometimes ; these simple 
necessaries suffice for me, my Foker.” And here Pendennis 
began to look more serious. Without bantering further, Pen 
continued, “ I’ve rather serious thoughts of settling and marry- 
ing. No man can get on in the w r orld without some money at 
his back. You must have a certain stake to begin with, before 


PENDENNIS. 


469 

you can go in and play the great game. Who knows that I’m 
not going to try, old fellow ? Worse men than I have won at 
it. And as I have not got enough capital from my fathers, I 
must get some by my wife — that’s all. ” 

They were walking down Grosvenor Street, as they talked, 
or rather as Pen talked, in the selfish fulness of his heart ; and 
Mr. Pen must have been too much occupied with his own 
affairs to remark the concern and agitation of his neighbor, for 
he continued — “ We are no longer children, you know, you and 
I, Harry. Bah ! the time of our romance has passed away. 
We don’t marry for passion, but for prudence and for establish- 
ment. What do you take your cousin for ? Because she is a 
nice girl, and an Earl’s daughter, and the old folks wish it, and 
that sort of thing.” 

“ And you, Pendennis,” asked Foker, “ you ain’t very fond 
of the girl — you’re going to marry ? ” 

Pen shrugged his shoulders. “ Comme fa” said he ; “ I like 
her well enough. She’s pretty enough ; she’s clever enough. 
I think she’ll do very well. And she has got money enough — 
that’s the great point. Pshaw ! you know who she is, don’t 
you ? I thought you were sweet on her yourself one night 
when we dined with her mamma. It’s little Amory.” 

“ I — I thought so,” Foker said : “ and has she accepted 
you ? ” 

“ Not quite,” Arthur replied, with a confident smile, which 
seemed to say, I have but to ask, and she comes to me that 
instant.” 

“ Oh, not quite,” said Foker; and he broke out with such a 
dreadful laugh, that Pen, for the first time, turned his f thoughts 
from himself towards his companion, and was struck by the 
other’s ghastly pale face. 

“ My dear fellow, Fo ! what’s the matter ? You’re ill,” Pen 
said, in a tone of real concern. 

“ You think it was the champagne at Gaunt House, don’t 
you ? It ain’t that. Come in ; let me talk to you for a minute. 
I’ll tell you what it is. D — it, let me tell somebody,” Foker 
said. 

They were at Mr. Foker’s door by this time, and, opening it, 
Harry walked with his friend into his apartments, which were 
situated in the back part of the house, and behind the family 
dining-room, where the elder Foker received his guests, sur- 
rounded by pictures of himself, his wife, his infant son on a 
donkey, and the late Earl of Gravesend in his robes as a Peer. 
Foker and Pen passed by this chamber, now closed with death- 


470 


PEND ENNIS. 


like shutters, and entered into the young man’s own quarters. 
Dusky streams of sunbeams were playing into that room, and 
lighting up poor Harry’s gallery of dancing girls and opera 
nymphs with flickering illuminations. 

“Look here ! I can’t help telling you, Pen,” he said. “ Ever 
since the night we dined there, I’m so fond of that girl, that I 
think I shall die if don’t get her. I feel as if I should go mad 
sometimes. I can’t stand it, Pen. I couldn’t bear to hear you 
talking about her, just now, about marrying her only because 
she’s money. Ah, Pen, that ain’t the question in marrying. 
I’d bet anything it ain’t. Talking about money and such a 
girl as that, it’s — it’s — what d’yecallem — you know what I mean 
— I ain’t good at talking — sacrilege, then. If she’d have me, 
I’d take and sweep a crossing, that I would ! ” 

“ Poor Fo ! I don’t think that would tempt her,” Pen said, 
eyeing his friend with a great deal of real good-nature and pity. 
“ She is not a girl for love and a cottage.” 

“ She ought to be a duchess, I know that very well, and I 
know she wouldn’t take me unless I could make her a great 
place in the world — for I ain’t good for anything myself much 
— I ain’t clever and that sort of thing,” Foker said sadly. 
“ If I had all the diamonds that all the duchesses and mar- 
chionesses had on to-night, wouldn’t I put ’em in her lap ? 
But what’s the use of talking ? I’m booked for another race. 
It’s that kills me, Pen. I can’t get out of it ; though I die, I 
can’t get out of it. And though my cousin’s a nice girl, and I 
like her very well, and that, yet I hadn’t seen this one when 
our Governors settled that matter between us. And when you 
talked, just now, about her doing very well, and about her hav- 
ing money enough for both of you, I thought to myself it isn’t 
money or mere liking a girl, that ought to be enough to make 
a fellow marry. He may marry, and find he likes somebody 
else better. All the money in the world won’t make you happy 
then. Look at me ; I’ve plenty of money, or shall have, out of 
the mash-tubs, as you call ’em. My Governor thought he’d 
made it all right for me in settling my marriage with my cousin. 
I tell you it won’t do ; and when Lady Ann has got her hus- 
band, it won’t be happy for either of us, and she’ll have the 
most miserable beggar in town.” 

“ Poor old fellow ! ” Pen said, with rather a cheap magna- 
nimity, “ I wish I could help you. I had no idea of this, and 
that you were so wild about the girl. Do you think she would 
have you without your money ? No. Do you think your father 
would agree to break off your engagement with your cousin ? 


PEND ENNIS, 


47 1 

You know him very well, and that he would cast you off rather 
than do so. 3 ’ 

The unhappy Foker only groaned a reply, flinging himself 
prostrate on a sofa, face forwards, his head in his hands. 

“ As for my affair,” Pen went on — “ my dear fellow, if I had 
thought matters were so critical with you, at least I would not 
have pained you by choosing you as my confidant. And my 
business is not serious, at least not as yet. I have not spoken 
a word about it to Miss Amory. Very likely she would not 
have me if I asked her. Only I have had a great deal of talk 
about it with my uncle, who says that the match might be an 
eligible one for me. I’m ambitious and I’m poor. And it 
appears Lady Clavering will give her a good deal of money, and 
Sir Francis might be got to — never mind the rest. Nothing 
is settled, Harry. They are going out of town directly. I 
promise you I won’t ask her before she goes. There’s no 
hurry ; there’s time for everybody. But, suppose you got her, 
Foker. Remember what you said about marriages just now, 
and the misery of a man who doesn’t care for his wife ; and 
what sort of a wife would you have who didn’t care for her 
husband ? ” 

“ But she would care for me,” said Foker, from his sofa — 
“ that is, I think she would. Last night only, as we were dan- 
cing, she said — ” 

“ What did she say? ” Pen cried, starting up in great wrath. 
But he saw his own meaning more clearly than Foker, and 
broke off with a laugh — “ Well, never mind what she said, 
Harry. Miss Amory is a clever girl, and says numbers of civil 
things — to you — to me, perhaps — and who the deuce knows to 
whom besides ? Nothing’s settled, old boy. At least, my heart 
won’t break if I don’t get her. Win her if you can, and I wish 
you joy of her. Good-by ! Don’t think about what I said to 
you. I was excited, and confoundedly thirsty in those hot 
rooms, and didn’t, I suppose, put enough Seltzer water into the 
champagne. Good-night! I’ll keep your counsel too. ‘Mum’ 
is the word between us; and ‘let there be a fair fight, and let 
the best man win,’ as Peter Crawley says.” 

So saying, Mr. Arthur Pendennis, giving a very queer and 
rather dangerous look at his companion, shook him by the hand, 
with somethingof that sort of cordiality which befitted his just 
repeated simile of the boxing-match, and which Mr. Bendigo 
displays when he shakes hands with Mr. Caunt before they 
fight each other for the champion’s belt and two hundred 
pounds a side. Foker returned his friend’s salute with an 


PENDENNIS, 


47 2 

imploring look, and a piteous squeeze of the hand, sank back 
on his cushions again, and Pen, putting on his hat, strode forth 
into the air, and almost over the body of the matutinal house- 
maid, who was rubbing the steps at the door. 

“ And so he wants her too ? does he ? ” thought Pen as he 
marched along — and noted within himself with a fatal keenness 
of perception and almost an infernal mischief, that the very 
pains and tortures which that honest heart of Foker’s was 
suffering gave a zest and an impetus to his own pursuit of 
Blanche : if pursuit that might be called which had been 
no pursuit as yet but mere sport and idle dallying. “ She 
said something to him, did she ? perhaps she gave him the 
fellow flower to his ; ” and he took out of his coat and twiddled 
in his thumb and finger a poor little shrivelled, crumbled bud 
that had faded and blackened with the heat and flare of the 
night. — “ I wonder to how many more she has given her artless 
tokens of affection — the little flirt ” — and he flung his into the 
gutter, where the water may have refreshed it, and where any 
amateur of rosebuds may have picked it up. And then bethink- 
ing him that the day was quite bright, and that the passers-by 
might be staring at his beard and white neck-cloth, our modest 
young gentleman took a cab and drove to the Temple. 

Ah ! is this the boy that prayed at his mother’s knee but a 
few years since, and for whom very likely at this hour of morn- 
ing she is praying? Is this jaded and selfish worldling the lad 
who, a short while back, was ready to fling away his worldly 
all, his hope, his ambition, his chance of life, for his love ? 
This is the man you are proud of, old Pendennis. You boast 
of having formed him : and of having reasoned him out of his 
absurd romance and folly — and groaning in your bed over your 
pains and rheumatisms, satisfy yourself still by thinking, that, 
at last, that lad will do something to better himself in life, and 
that the Pendennises will take a good place in the world. And 
is he the only one, who in his progress through this dark life 
goes wilfully or fatally astray, whilst the natural truth and love 
which should illumine him grow dim in the poisoned air, and 
suffice to light him no more ? 

When Pen was gone away, poor Harry Foker got up from 
the sofa, and taking out from his waistcoat — the splendidly 
buttoned, the gorgeously embroidered, the work of his mamma 
— a little white rosebud, he drew from his dressing-case, also 
the maternal present, a pair of scissors, with which he nipped 


PENDENNIS. 


473 

carefully the stalk of the flower, and placing it in a glass of 
water opposite his bed, he sought refuge there from care and 
bitter remembrances. 

It is to be presumed that Miss Blanche Amory had more 
than one rose in her bouquet, and why should not the kind 
young creature give out of her superfluity, and make as many 
partners as possible happy ? 


CHAPTER XLVI. 

MONSEIGNEUR S’AMUSE. 

The exertions of that last night at Gaunt House had proved 
almost too much for Major Pendennis ; and as soon as he could 
move his weary old body with safety, he transported himself 
groaning to Buxton, and sought relief in the healing waters of 
that place. Parliament broke up. Sir Francis Clavering and 
family left town, and the affairs which we have just mentioned 
to the reader were not advanced, in the brief interval of a few 
days or weeks which have occurred between this and the last 
chapter. The town was, however, emptied since then. 

The season was now come to a conclusion ; Pen’s neighbors, 
the lawyers, were gone upon circuit : and his more fashionable 
friends had taken their passports for the continent, or had fled 
for health or excitement to the Scotch moors. Scarce a man 
was to be seen in the bow-windows of the clubs, or on the 
solitary Pall Mall pavement. The red jackets had disappeared 
from before the Palace-gate: the tradesmen of St. James’s 
were abroad taking their pleasure : the tailors had grown 
mustaches and were gone up the Rhine : the bootmakers were 
at Ems or Baden, blushing when they met their customers at 
those places of recreation, or punting beside their creditors at 
the gambling-tables : the clergymen of St. James’s only preached 
to half a congregation, in which there was not a single sinner 
of distinction : the band in Kensington Gardens had shut up 
their instruments of brass and trumpets of silver : only two or 
three old flies and chaises crawled by the banks of the Serpen- 
tine, and Clarence Bulbul, who was retained in town by his 
arduous duties as a Treasury clerk, when he took his afternoon 
ride in Rotten Row, compared its loneliness to the vastness 
of the Arabian desert, and himself to a Bedouin wending his 


PENDENNIS . 


474 

way through that dusty solitude. Warrington stowed away a 
quantity of Cavendish tobacco in his carpet-bag, and betook 
himself, as his custom was in the vacation, to his brother’s 
house in Norfolk. Pen was left alone in chambers for a while, 
for this man of fashion could not quit the metropolis when he 
chose always ; and was at present detained by the affairs of his 
newspaper, the “ Pall Mall Gazette,” of which he acted as the 
editor and chargd d’affaires during the temporary absence of 
the chief, Captain Shandon, who was with his family at the 
salutary watering-place of Boulogne sur Mer. 

Athough, as we have seen, Mr. Pen had pronounced himself 
for years past to be a man perfectly blase and wearied of life, 
yet the truth is that he was an exceedingly healthy young fellow 
still ; with a fine appetite, which he satisfied with the greatest 
relish and satisfaction at least once a-day ; and a constant 
desire for society, which showed him to be anything but mis- 
anthropical. If he could not get a good dinner he sat down to 
a bad one with entire contentment ; if he could not procure the 
company of witty or great or beautiful persons, he put up with 
any society that came to hand ; and was perfectly satisfied in a 
tavern parlor or on board a Greenwich steamboat, or in a jaunt 
to Hampstead with Mr. Finucane, his colleague at the “ Pall 
Mall Gazette ; ” or in a visit to the summer theatres across the 
river ; or to the Royal Garden of Vauxhall, where, he was on 
terms of friendship with the great Simpson, and where he shook 
the principal comic singer or the lovely equestrian of the arena 
by the hand. And while he could watch the grimaces or the 
graces of these with a satiric humor that was not deprived 
of sympathy, he could look on with an eye of kindness at the 
lookers-on too ; at the roystering youth bent upon enjoyment, 
and here taking it*; at the honest parents, with their delighted 
children laughing and clapping their hands at the show : at the 
poor outcasts, whose laughter was less innocent though perhaps 
louder, and. brought their shame and their youth here, to dance 
and be merry till the dawn at least ; and to get bread and 
drown care. Of this sympathy with all conditions of men Arthur 
often boasted : he was pleased to possess it : and said that he 
hoped thus to the last he should retain it. As another man has 
an ardor for art or music, or natural science, Mr. Pen said that 
anthropology was his favorite pursuit ; and had his eyes always 
eagerly open to its infinite varieties and beauties : contem- 
plating with an unfailing delight all specimens of it in all 
places to which he resorted, whether it was the coquetting of a 
wrinkled dowager in a ball-room, or a high-bred young beauty 


PENDENNIS. 


475 

blushing in her prime there ; whether it was a hulking guards- 
man coaxing a servant-girl in the Paik — or innocent little 
Tommy that was feeding the ducks whilst the nurse listened. 
And indeed a man, whose heart is pretty clean, can indulge in 
this pursuit with an enjoyment that never ceases, and is only 
perhaps the more keen because it is secret and has a touch of 
sadness in it ; because he is of his mood and humor lonely, and 
apart although not alone. 

Yes, Pen used to brag and talk in his impetuous way to 
Warrington. “ I was in love so fiercely in my youth, that I 
have burned out that flame forever, I think ; and if ever I 
marry, it will be a marriage of reason that I will make, with a 
well-bred, good-tempered, good-looking person who has a little 
money, and so forth, that will cushion our carriage in its 
course through life. As for romance, it is all done ; I have 
spent that out, and am old before my time — I’m proud of it.” 

“ Stuff ! ” growled the other, “ you fancied you were getting 
bald the other day, and bragged about it as you do about 
everything. But you began to use the bear’s-grease pot directly 
the hair-dresser told you ; and are scented like a barber ever 
since.” 

“ You are Diogenes,” the other answered, and you want 
every man to live in a tub like yourself. Violets smell better 
than stale tobacco, you grizzly old cynic.” But Mr. Pen was 
blushing whilst he made this reply to his unromantical friend, 
and indeed cared a great deal more about himself still than 
such a philosopher perhaps should have done. Indeed, con- 
sidering that he was careless about the world, Mr. Pen orna- 
mented his person with no small pains in order to make 
himself agreeable to it, and for a weary pilgrim as he was, wore 
very tight boots and bright varnish. 

It was in this dull season of the year then, of a shining 
Friday night in Autumn, that Mr. Pendennis, having completed 
at his newspaper office a brilliant leading article — such as 
Captain Shandon himself might have written, had the Captain 
been in good-humor, and inclined to work, which he never 
would do except under compulsion — that Mr. Arthur Pendennis 
having written his article, and reviewed it approvingly as it lay 
before him in its wet proof sheet at the office of the paper, 
bethought him that he would cross the water, and regale him- 
self with the fireworks and other amusements of Vauxhall. So 
he affably put in his pocket the order which admitted “ Editor 
of the Pall Mall Gazette and friend ” to that place of recreation, 
and paid with the coin of the realm a sufficient sum to enable 


PEND ENNIS. 


476 

him to cross Waterloo Bridge. The walk thence to the Gardens 
was pleasant, the stars were shining in the skies above, looking 
down upon the royal property, whence the rockets and Roman 
candles had not yet ascended to outshine the stars. 

Before you enter the enchanted ground, where twenty thorn 
sand additional lamps are burned every night as usual, most of 
us have passed through the black and dreary passage and 
wickets which hide the splendors of Vauxhall from uninitiated 
men. In the walls of this passage are two holes strongly illu- 
minated, in the midst of which you see two gentlemen at desks, 
where they will take either your money as a private individual, 
or your order of admission if you are provided with that pass- 
port to the Gardens. Pen went to exhibit his ticket at the last- 
named orifice, where, however, a gentleman and two ladies were 
already in parley before him. 

The gentleman, whose hat was very much on one side, and 
who wore a short and shabby cloak in an excessive^ smart 
manner, was crying out in a voice which Pen at once recognized — 

“ Bedad, sir, if ye doubt me honor, will ye obleege me by 
stipping out of that box, and — ” 

“ Lor, Capting! ’’ cried the elder lady. 

“ Don’t bother me,” said the man in the box. 

“ And ask Mr. Hodgen himself, who’s in the gyardens, to 
let these leedies pass. Don’t be froightened, me dear madam, 
I’m not going to quarl with this gintleman, at anyreet before 
leedies. Will ye go, sir, and desoire Mr. Hodgen (whose 
orther I keem in with, and he’s me most intemate friend, and I 
know he’s goan to sing the ‘ Body Snatcher’ here to-noight), 
with Captain Costigan’s compliments, to stip out and let in the 
leedies — for meself, sir, oi’ve seen Vauxhall, and I scawrun 
any interfayrance on moi account : but for these leedies, one of 
them has never been there, and oi should think ye’d hardly take 
advantage of me misfartune in losing the tickut, to deproive her 
of her pleasure.” 

“ It ain’t no use, Captain. I can’t go about your business,” 
the check-taker said ; on which the Captain swore an oath, and 
the elder lady said, “ Lor, ’ow provokin’ ! ” 

As for the young one, she looked up at the Captain and 
said, “ Never mind, Captain Costigan, I’m sure I don’t want to 
go at all. Come away, mamma.” And with this, although she 
did not want to go at all, her 'feelings overcame her, and she 
began to cry. 

“ Me poor child ! ” the Captain said. “ Can ye see that, 
sir, and will ye not let this innocent creature in ? ” 


PENDENNIS. 


477 

“ It ain’t my business,” cried the door-keeper, peevishly, 
out of the illuminated box. And at this minute Arthur came 
up, and recognizing Costigan, said, “ Don’t you know me, Cap- 
tain ? Pendennis ! ” And he took off his hat and made a bow 
to the two ladies. “ Me dear boy ! Me dear friend ! ” cried 
the Captain, extending towards Pendennis the grasp of friend- 
ship ; and he rapidly explained to the other what he called “ a 
most unluckee conthratong.” He had an order for Vauxhall, 
admitting two, from Mr. Hodgen, then within the Gardens, 
and singing (as he did at the Back Kitchen and the nobility’s 
concerts) the “ Body Snatcher,” the “ Death of General Wolfe,” 
the “ Banner of Blood,” and other favorite melodies ; and, 
having this order for the admission of two persons, he thought 
that it would admit three, and had come accordingly to the 
Gardens with his friends. But, on his way, Captain Costigan 
had lost the paper of admission — it was not forthcoming at all ; 
and the leeches must go back again, to the great disappoint- 
ment of one of them, as Pendennis saw. 

Arthur had a great deal of good-nature for everybody, and 
how could he refuse his sympathy in such a case as this ? He 
had seen the innocent face as it looked up to the Captain, the 
appealing look of the girl, the piteous quiver of the mouth, and 
the final outburst of tears. If it had been his last guinea in 
the world, he must have paid it to have given the poor little 
thing pleasure. She turned the said imploring eyes away 
directly they lighted upon a stranger, and began to wipe them 
with her handkerchief. Arthur looked very handsome and 
kind as he stood before the women, with his hat off, blushing, 
bowing, generous, a gentleman. “ Who are they ? ” he asked 
of himself. He thought he had seen the elder lady before. 

“ If I can be of any service to you, Captain Costigan,” the 
young man said, “ I hope you will command me ; is there any 
difficulty about taking these ladies into the garden ? Will you 
kindly make use of my purse ? And — and I have a ticket my- 
self which will admit two — I hope, ma’am, you will permit me ? ” 

The first impulse of the Prince of Fairoaks was to pay for 
the whole party, and to make away with his newspaper order 
as poor Costigan had done with his own ticket. But his instinct, 
and the appearance of the two women, told him that they would 
be better pleased if he did not give himself the airs of a grand 
seigneur , and he handed his purse to Costigan, and laughingly 
pulled out his ticket with one hand, as he offered the other to 
the elder of the ladies — ladies was not the word — they had 
bonnets and shawls, and collars and ribbons, and the youngest 


PENDENNIS. 


478 

showed a pretty little foot and boot under her modest gray 
gown, but his Highness of Fairoaks was courteous to every 
person who wore a petticoat, whatever its texture was, and the 
humbler the wearer only the more stately and polite in his 
demeanor. 

“ Fanny, take the gentleman’s arm,” the elder said ; “ since 
you will be so very kind — I’ve seen you often come in at our 
gate, sir, and go into Captain Strong’s at No. 4.” 

Fanny made a little curtsey, and put her hand under Ar- 
thur’s arm. It had on a shabby little glove, but it was pretty 
and small. She was not a child, but she was scarcely a woman 
as yet ; her tears had dried up, her cheek mantled with youth- 
ful blushes, and her eyes glistened with pleasure and gratitude, 
as she looked up into Arthur’s kind face. 

Arthur, in a protecting way, put his other hand upon the 
little one resting on his arm. “ Fanny’s a very pretty little 
name,” he said ; “ and so you know me, do you ? ” 

“ We keep the lodge, sir, at Shepherd’s Inn,” Fanny said 
with a curtsey ; “and I’ve never been at Vauxhall, sir, and pa 
didn’t like me to go— and — and — O — O — law, how beautiful ! ” 
She shrank back as she spoke, starting with wonder and delight 
as she saw the Royal Gardens blaze before her with a hundred 
million of lamps, with a splendor such as the finest fairy tale, 
the finest pantomime she had ever witnessed at the theatre, had 
never realized. Pen was pleased with her pleasure, and pressed 
to his side the little hand which clung so kindly to him. “ What 
would I not give for a little of this pleasure ? ” said the blase 
young man. 

“ Your purse, Pendennis, my dear boy,” said the Captain’s 
voice behind him. “ Will ye count it ? it’s all roight — no — ye 
thrust in old Jack Costigan (he thrusts me, ye see, madam). 
Ye’ve been me preserver, Pen, (I’ve known um since choild- 
hood, Mrs. Bolton ; he’s the proproieter of Fairoaks Castle, 
and many’s the cooper of Clart I’ve dthrunk there with the 
first nobilitee of his neetive countee) — Mr. Pendennis, ye’ve 
been me preserver, and oi thank ye ; me daughtther will thank 
ye ; — Mr. Simpson, your humble servant, sir.” 

If Pen was magnificent in his courtesy to the ladies, what 
was his splendor in comparison to Captain Costigan’s bowing 
here and there, and crying bravo to the singers ? 

A man, descended like Costigan, from a long line of Hiber- 
nian kings, chieftains, and other magnates and sheriffs of the 
county, had of course too much dignity and self-respect to walk 
arrum-in-arrum (as the Captain phrased it) with a lady who 


PENDENNIS. 


479 

occasionally swept his room out, and cooked his mutton-chops. 
In the course of their journey from Shepherd’s Inn to Vauxhal! 
Gardens, Captain Costigan had walked by the side of the two 
ladies, in a patronizing and affable manner pointing out to them 
the edifices worthy of note, and discoorsing, according to his 
wont, about other cities and countries which he had visited, 
and the people of rank and fashion with whom he had the 
honor of an acquaintance. Nor could it be expected, that, 
arrived in the Royal property, and strongly illuminated by the 
flare of the twenty thousand additional lamps, the Captain 
could relax from his dignity, and give an arm to a lady who 
was, in fact, little better than a housekeeper or charwoman. 

But Pen, on his part, had no such scruples. Miss Fanny 
Bolton did not make his bed nor sweep his chambers ; and he 
did not choose to let go his pretty little partner. As for 
Fanny, her color heightened, and her bright eyes shone the 
brighter with pleasure, as she leaned for protection on the arm 
of such a fine gentleman as Mr. Pen. And she looked at num- 
bers of other ladies in the place, and at scores of other gentle- 
men under whose protection they were walking here and there; 
and she thought that her gentleman was handsomer and 
grander looking than any other gent there. Of course there 
were votaries of pleasure of all ranks in the garden — rakish 
young surgeons, fast young clerks and commercialists, occa- 
sional dandies of the Guard regiments, and the rest. Old Lord 
Colchicum was there in attendance upon Mademoiselle Carac- 
oline, who had been riding in the ring ; and who talked her 
native French very loud, and used idiomatic expressions of 
exceeding strength as she walked about, leaning on the arm of 
his lordship. 

Colchicum was in attendance upon Mademoiselle Caracoline, 
little Tom Tufthunt was in attendance upon Lord Colchicum ; 
and rather pleased, too, with his position. When Don Juan 
scales the wall, there’s never a want of a Leporello to hold the 
ladder. Tom Tufthunt was quite happy to act as friend to 
the elderly Viscount, and to carve the fowl, and to make the 
salad at supper. When Pen and his young lady met the Vis- 
count’s party, that noble peer only gave Arthur a passing leer 
of recognition as his lordship’s eyes passed from Pen’s face 
under the bonnet of Pen’s companion. But Tom Tufthunt 
wagged his head very good-naturedly at Mr. Arthur, and said, 
“ How are you, old boy ? ” and looked extremely knowing at 
the godfather of this history. 

“ That is the great rider at Astley’s ; I have seen her there,” 


PENDENNIS. 


480 

Miss Bolton said, looking after Mademoiselle Caracoline ; and 
who is that man ? is it not the gentleman in the ring ? ” 

“ That is Lord Viscount Colchicum, Miss Fanny,” said Pen, 
with an air of protection. He meant no harm ; he was pleased 
to patronize the young girl, and he was not displeased that she 
should be §o pretty, and that she should be hanging upon his 
arm, and that yonder elderly Don Juan should have seen her 
there. # 

Fanny was very pretty ; her eyes were dark and brilliant ; 
her teeth were like little pearls ; her mouth was almost as red 
as Mademoiselle Caracoline’s when the latter had put on her 
vermilion. And what a difference there was between the one’s 
voice and the other’s, between the girl’s laugh and the woman’s ! 
It was only very lately, indeed, that Fanny, when looking in the 
little glass over the Bows-Costigan mantel-piece as she was 
dusting it, had begun to suspect that she was a beauty. But a 
year ago, she was a clumsy, gawky girl, at whom her father 
sneered, and of whom the girls at the day-school (Miss Mini- 
fer’s, Newcastle Street, Strand ; Miss M., the younger sister, 
took the leading business at the Norwich circuit in 182 — ; and 
she herself had played for two seasons with some credit T.R. 
E. O., T. R. S. W., until she fell down a trap-door and broke 
her leg) ; the girls at Fanny’s school, we say, took no account 
of her, and thought her a dowdy little creature as long as she 
remained under Miss Minifer’s instruction. And it was 
unremarked and almost unseen in the dark porter’s lodge of 
Shepherd’s Inn, that this little flower bloomed into beauty. 

So this young person hung upon Mr. Pen’s arm, and they 
paced the gardens together. Empty as London was, there were 
still some two millions of people left lingering about it, and 
amongst them one or two of the acquaintances of Mr. Arthur 
Pendennis. 

Amongst them, silent and alone, pale, with his hands in his 
pockets, and a rueful nod of the head to Arthur as they met, 
passed Henry Foker, Esq. Young Henry was trying to ease 
his mind by moving from place to place, and from excitement 
to excitement. But he thought about Blanche as he sauntered 
in the dark walks ; he thought about Blanche as he looked at 
the devices of the lamps. He consulted the fortune-teller 
about her, and was disappointed when that gypsy told him that 
he was in love with a dark lady who would make him happy ; 
and at the concert, though Mr. Momus sang his most stunning 
comic songs, and asked his most astonishing riddles, never did 
a kind smile come to visit Foker’s lips. In fact, he never heard 
Mr. Momus at all. 


PENDENNIS. 


481 

Pen and Miss Bolton were hard by listening to* the same 
concert, and the latter remarked, and Pen laughed at, Mr. 
Foker’s wobegone face. 

Fanny asked what it was that made that odd-looking little 
man so dismal ? “I think he is crossed in love ! ” Pen said. 
“Isn’t that enough to make any man dismal, Fanny?” And 
he looked down at her, splendidly protecting her, like Egmont 
at Clara in Goethe’s play, or Leicester at Amy in Scott’s novel. 

“ Crossed in love, is he ? poor gentleman,” said Fanny with 
a sigh, and her eyes turned round towards him with no little 
kindness and pity — but Harry did not see the beautiful dark 
eyes. 

“ How dy do, Mr. Pendennis ? ” — a voice broke in here — it 
was that of a young man in a large white coat with a red neck- 
cloth, over which a dingy shirt collar was turned so as to exhibit 
a dubious neck — with a large pin of bullion or other metal, and 
an imaginative waistcoat with exceedingly fanciful glass buttons 
and trousers that cried with a loud voice, “ Come look at me, 
and see how cheap and tawdry I am ; my master, what a dirty 
buck ! ” and a little stick in one pocket of his coat, and a lady 
in pink satin on the other arm — “ How dy do — Forget me, I 
dare say ? Huxter, — Clavering.” 

“ How do you do, Mr. Huxter,” the Prince of Fairoaks said 
in his most princely manner — “ I hope you are very well.” 

“ Pretty bobbish, thanky.” — And Mr. Huxter wagged his 
head. “ I say, Pendennis, you’ve been coming it uncommon 
strong since we had the row at Wapshot’s, don’t you remember ? 
Great author, hay ? Go about with the swells. Saw your name 
in the ‘ Morning Post.’ I suppose you’re too much of a swell 
to come and have a bit of supper with an old friend ? — Charter- 
house Lane to-morrow night, — son\e devilish good fellows from 
Bartholomew’s and some stunning gin punch. Here’s my card.” 
And with this Mr. Huxter released his hand from his pocket 
where his cane was, and pulling off the top of his card case 
with his teeth produced thence a visiting ticket, which he 
handed to Pen. 

“You are exceedingly kind, I am sure,” said Pen: “but I 
regret that I have an engagement which will take me out of 
town tomorrow night.” And the Marquis of Fairoaks, wonder- 
ing that such a creature as this could have the audacity to give 
him a card, put Mr. Huxter’s card into his waistcoat pocket with 
a lofty courtsey. Possibly Mr. Samuel Huxter was not aware 
that there was any great social difference between Mr. Arthur 
Pendennis and himself. Mr. Huxter’s father was a surgeon 


PEND ENNIS. 


482 

and apothecary at Clavering, just as Mr. Pendennis’s papa had 
been a surgeon and apothecary at Bath. But the impudence 
of some men is beyond all calculation. 

“Well, old fellow, never mind,” said Mr. Huxter, who, 
always frank and familiar, was from vinous excitement even 
more affable than usual. “ If ever you are passing, look up at 
our place, — I’m mostly at home Saturdays ; and there’s gen- 
erally a cheese in the cupboard. Ta, Ta. — There’s the bell for 
the fireworks ringing. Come along, Mary.” And he set off 
running with the rest of the crowd in the direction of the 
fireworks. 

So did Pen presently, when this agreeable youth was out of 
sight, begin to run with his little companion ; Mrs. Bolton 
following after them, with Captain Costigan at her side. But 
the Captain was too majestic and dignified in his movements 
to run for friend or enemy, and he pursued his course with the 
usual jaunty swagger which distinguished his steps, so that he 
and his companion were speedily distanced by Pen and Miss 
Fanny. 

Perhaps Arthur forgot, or perhaps he did not choose to re- 
member, that the elder couple had no money in their pockets, 
as had been proved by their adventure at the entrance of the 
Gardens ; howbeit, Pen paid a couple of shillings for himself 
and his partner, and with her hanging close on his arm, scaled 
the staircase which leads to the firework gallery. The Captain 
and mamma might have followed them if they liked, but Arthur 
and Fanny were too busy to look back. People were pushing 
and squeezing there beside and behind them. One eager indi- 
vidual rushed by Fanny, and elbowed her so, that she fell back 
with a little cry, upon which, of course, Arthur caught her 
adroitly in his arms, and, just for protection, kept her so de- 
fended, until they mounted the stair, and took their places. 

Poor Foker sat alone on one of the highest benches, his 
face illuminated by the fireworks, or in their absence by the 
moon. Arthur saw him, and laughed, but did not occupy him- 
self about his friend much. He was engaged with Fanny. 
How she wondered ! how happy she was ! how she cried oh, 
oh, oh, as the rockets soared into the air, and showered down 
in azure, and emerald, and vermilion. As these wonders 
blazed and disappeared before her, the little girl thrilled and 
trembled with delight at Arthur’s side — her hand was under his 
arm still, he felt it pressing him as she looked up delighted. 

“ How beautiful they are, sir ! ” she cried. 

“Don’t call me sir, Fanny.” Arthur said. 


PENDENNIS. 


453 

A quick blush rushed up into the girl’s face. “ What shall 
I call you ? ” she said, in a low voice, sweet and tremulous. 
“ What would you wish me to say, sir ? ” 

“Again, Fanny! Well, I forgot; it is best so, my dear,’ 1 
Pendennis said, very kindly and gently. “I may call you 
Fanny?” 

“ O yes ! ” she said and the little hand pressed his arm once 
more very eagerly, and the girl clung to him so that he could 
feel her heart beating on his shoulder. 

“ 1 may call you Fanny, because you are a young girl, and 
a good girl, Fanny, and I am an old gentleman. But you 
mustn’t call me anything but sir, or Mr. Pendennis, if you like ; 
for we live in very different stations, Fanny ; and don’t think 
I speak unkindly ; and — and why do you take your hand away, 
Fanny? Are you afraid of me? Do you think I would hurt 
you ? Not for all the world, my dear little girl. And — and 
look how beautiful the moon and .stars are, and how calmly 
they shine when the rockets have gone out, and the noisy wheels 
have done hissing and blazing. When I came here to-night I 
did not think I should have had such a pretty little companion 
to sit by my side, and see these fine fireworks. You must know 
I live by myself, and work very hard. I write in books and 
newspapers, Fanny ; and I was quite tired out, and expected to 
sit alone all night ; and — don’t cry, my dear, dear, little girl.” 
Here Pen broke out, rapidly putting an end to the calm oration 
which he had begun to deliver ; for the sight of a woman’s tears 
always put his nerves in a quiver, and he began forthwith to 
coax her and soothe her, and to utter a hundred-and-twenty 
little ejaculations of pity and sympathy, which need not be re- 
peated here, because they would be absurd in print. So would 
a mother’s talk to a child be absurd in print; so would a lover’s 
to his bride. That sweet artless poetry bears no translation ; 
and is too subtle for grammarians’ clumsy definitions. You 
have but the same four letters to describe the salute which you 
perform on your grandmother’s forehead, and that which you 
bestow on the sacred cheek of your mistress ; but the same four 
letters, and not one of them a labial. Do we mean to hint that 
Mr. Arthur Pendennis made any use of the monosyllable in 
question ? Not so. In the first place, it was dark : the fire- 
works were over, and nobody could see him ; secondly, he was 
not a man to have this kind of secret, and tell it ; thirdly, and 
lastly, let the honest fellow who has kissed a pretty girl say 
what would have been his own conduct in such a delicate 
juncture ? 


484 


PENDENNIS : 


Well, the truth is, that however you may # suspect him, and 
whatever you would have done under the circumstances, or Mr. 
Pen would have liked to do, he behaved honestly, and like a 
man. “ I will not play with this little girl’s heart,” he said 
within himself, “ and forget my own or her honor. She seems 
to have a great deal of dangerous and rather contagious sensi- 
bility, and I am very glad the fireworks are over, and that I 
can take her back to her mother. Come along, Fanny ; mind 
the steps, and lean on me. Don’t stumble, you heedless little 
thing; this is the way, and there is your mamma at the door.” 

And there, indeed, Mrs. Bolton was, unquiet in spirit, and 
grasping her umbrella. She seized Fanny with maternal fierce- 
ness and eagerness, and uttered some rapid abuse to the girl 
in an undertone. The expression in Captain Costigan’s eye 
- — standing behind the matron and winking at Pendennis from 
under his hat — was, I am bound to say, indefinably humorous. 

It was so much so, that Pen could not refrain from bursting 
into a laugh. “ You should have taken my arm, Mrs. Bolton,” 
he said, offering it. “ I am very glad to bring Miss Fanny back 
quite safe to you. We thought you would have followed us up 
into the gallery. We enjoyed the fireworks, didn’t we ? ” 

“O yes ! ” said Miss Fanny, with rather a demure look. 

“And the bouquet was magnificent,” said Pen. “ And it is 
ten hours since I had anything to eat, ladies ; and I wish you 
would permit me to invite you to supper.” 

“ Dad,” said Costigan, “ I’d loike a snack tu ; only I forgawt 
me purse, or I should have invoited these leedies to a collec- 
tion. ” 

Mrs. Bolton with considerable asperity said, She ad an ead- 
ache, and would much rather go ome. 

“ A lobster salad is the best thing in the world for a head- 
ache,” Pen said gallantly, “and a glass of wine I’m sure will 
do you good. Come, Mrs. Bolton, be kind to me and oblige 
me. I sha’n’t have the heart to sup without you, and upon my 
word I have had no dinner. Give me your arm : give me the 
umbrella. Costigan, I’m sure you’ll take care of Miss Fanny; 
and I shall think Mrs. Bolton angry with me, unless she will 
favor me with her society. And we will all sup quietly, and go 
back in a cab together.” 

The cab, the lobster salad, the frank and good-humored 
look of Pendennis, as he smilingly invited the worthy matron, 
subdued her suspicions and her anger. Since he would be so 
obliging, she thought she could take a little bit of lobster, and 
so they all marched away to a box ; and Costigan called for a 


PENDENNIS. 485 

waither with such a loud and belligerent voice, as caused one 
of those officials instantly to run to him. 

The carte was examined on the wall, and Fanny was asked 
to choose her favorite dish ; upon which the young creature 
said she was fond of lobster, too, but also owned to a partiality 
for raspberry-tart. This delicacy was provided by Pen, and a 
bottle of the most frisky champagne was moreover ordered for 
the delight of the ladies. Little Fanny drank this ; — what 
other sweet intoxication had she not drunk in the Course of the 
night ? 

When the supper, which was very brisk and gay, was over, 
and Captain Costigan and Mrs. Bolton had partaken of some 
of the rack-punch that is so fragrant at Vauxhall, the bill was 
called and discharged by Pen with great generosity, — “ loike a 
foin young English gentleman of th’ olden toime, be Jove,” 
Costigan enthusiastically remarked. And as, when they went 
out of the box, he stepped forward and gave Mrs. Bolton his 
arm, Fanny fell to Pen’s lot, and the young people walked 
away in high good-humor together, in the wake of their seniors. 

The champagne and the rack-punch, though taken in 
moderation by all persons, except perhaps poor Cos, who 
lurched ever so little in his gait, had set them in high spirits 
and good-humor, so that Fanny began to skip and move her 
brisk little feet in time to the band, which was playing waltzes 
and galops for the dancers. As they came up to the dancing, 
the music and Fanny’s feet seemed to go quicker together — she 
seemed to spring, as if naturally, from the ground, and as if she 
required repression to keep her there. 

“ Shouldn’t you like a turn ? ” said the Prince of Fairoaks. 
“ What fun it would be ! Mrs. Bolton, ma’am, do let me take 
her once round.” Upon which Mr. Costigan said, “ Off wid 
you ! ” and Mrs. Bolton not refusing (indeed, she was an old 
war-horse, and would have liked, at the trumpet’s sound, to 
have entered the arena herself), Fanny’s shawl was off her back 
in a minute, and she and Arthur were whirling round in a waltz 
in the midst of a great deal of queer, but exceedingly joyful 
company. 

Pen had no mishap this time with little Fanny, as he had 
with Miss Blanche in old days, — at least, there was no mishap 
of his making. The pair danced away with great agility and 
contentment, — first a waltz, then a galop, then a waltz again, 
until, in the second waltz, they were bumped by another couple 
who had joined the Terpsichorean choir. This was Mr. Huxte^ 
and his pink satin young friend, of whom we have already had 
a glimpse. 


486 


PENDENNIS. 


Mr. Huxter very probably had been also partaking of 
supper, for he was even more excited now than at the time 
when he had previously claimed Pen’s acquaintance ; and, 
having run against Arthur and his partner, and nearly knocked 
them down, this amiable gentleman of course began to abuse 
the people whom he had injured, and broke out into a volley 
of slang against the unoffending couple. 

“ Now then, stoopid ! Don’t keep the ground if you can’t 
dance, old Slow Coach ! ” the young surgeon roared out (using, 
at the same time, other expressions far more emphatic), and 
was joined in his abuse by the shrill language and laughter of 
his partner j — to the interruption of the ball, the terror of poor 
little Fanny, and the immense indignation of Pen. 

Arthur was furious ; and not so angry at the quarrel as at 
the shame attending it. A battle with a fellow like that ! A 
row in a public garden, and with a porter’s daughter on his 
arm ! What a position for Arthur Pendennis ! He drew poor 
little Fanny hastily away from the dancers to her mother, and 
wished that lady, and Costigan, and poor Fanny underground, 
rather than there, in his companionship, and under his pro- 
tection. 

When Huxter commenced his attack, that free-spoken 
young gentleman had not seen who was his opponent ; and 
directly he was aware that it was Arthur whom he had insulted, 
he began to make apologies. “ Hold your stoopid tongue, 
Mary,” he said to his partner. “ It’s an old friend and crony 
at home. I beg pardon, Pendennis ; wasn’t aware it was you, 
old boy.” Mr. Huxter had been one of the boys of the Claver- 
ing School, who had been present at a combat which has been 
mentioned in the early part of this story, when young Pen 
knocked down the biggest champion of the academy, and 
Huxter knew that it was dangerous to quarrel with Arthur. 

His apologies were as odious to the other as his abuse had 
been. Pen stopped his tipsy remonstrances by telling him to 
hold his tongue, and desiring him not to use his (Pendennis’s) 
name in that place or any other ; and he walked out of the 
gardens with a titter behind him from the crowd, every one of 
whom he would have liked to massacre for having been witness 
to the degrading broil. He walked out of the gardens, quite 
forgetting poor little Fanny, who came trembling behind him 
with her mother and the stately Costigan. 

He was brought back to himself by a word from the Captain, 
who touched him on the shoulder just as they were passing the 
inner gate. 


PENDENNIS. 


487 

“There’s no ray-admittance except ye pay again,” the 
Captain said. “ Hadn’t I better go back and take the fellow 
your message ? ” 

Pen burst out laughing. “ Take him a message ! Do you 
think I would fight with such a fellow as that ? ” he asked. 

“No, no! Don’t, don’t!” cried out little Fanny. “How 
can you be so wicked, Captain Costigan ? ” The Captain mut- 
tered something about honor, and winked knowingly at Pen, 
but Arthur said gallantly, “ No, Fanny, don’t be frightened. 
It was my fault to have danced in such a place. I beg your 
pardon, to have asked you to dance there.” And he gave 
her his arm once more, and called a cab, and put his three 
friends into it. 

He was about to pay the driver, and to take another car- 
riage for himself, when little Fanny, still alarmed, put her little 
hand out, and caught him by the coat, and implored him and 
besought him to come in. 

“ Will nothing satisfy you,” said Pen, in great good-humor, 
“that I am not going back to fight him ? Well, I will come 
home with you. Drive to Shepherd’s Inn, Cab.” The cab 
drove to its destination. Arthur was immensely pleased by 
the girl’s solicitude about him : her tender terrors quite made 
him forget his previous annoyance. 

Pen put the ladies into their lodge, having shaken hands 
kindly with both of them ; and the Captain again whispered to 
him that he would see um in the morning if he was inclined, 
and take his message to that “ scounthrel.” But the Captain 
was in his usual condition when he made the proposal ; and 
Pen was perfectly sure that neither he nor Mr. Huxter, when 
they awoke, would remember anything about the dispute. 


CHAPTER XLVII. 

A VISIT OF POLITENESS. 

Costigan never roused Pen from his slumbers ; there was 
no hostile message from Mr. Huxter to disturb him ; and when 
Pen woke, it was with a brisker and more lively feeling than 
ordinarily attends that moment in the day of the tired and 
blase London man. A City man wakes up to care and consols, 


PENDENNIS. 


488 

and the thoughts of ’Change and the counting-house takes 
possession of him as soon as sleep flies from under his night- 
cap ; a lawyer rouses himself with the early morning to think 
of the case that will take him all his day to work upon, and the 
inevitable attorney to whom he has promised his papers ere 
night. Which of us has not his anxiety instantly present when 
his eyes are opened, to it and to the world, after his night’s 
sleep ? Kind strengthener that enables us to face the day’s 
task with renewed heart ! Beautiful ordinance of Providence 
that creates rest as it awards labor ! 

Mr Pendennis’s labor, or rather his disposition, was of that 
sort that his daily occupations did not much interest him, for 
the excitement of literary composition pretty soon subsides 
with the hired laborer, and the delight of seeing one’s self in 
print only extends to the first two or three appearances in the 
magazine or newspaper page. Pegasus put into harness, and 
obliged to run a stage every day, is as prosaic as any other 
hack, and won’t w r ork without his whip or his feed of corn. 
So, indeed, Mr. Arthur performed his work at the “ Pall Mall 
Gazette ” (and since his success as a novelist with an increased 
salary), but without the least enthusiasm, doing his best or 
pretty nearly, and sometimes writing ill and sometimes well. 
He was a literary hack, naturally fast in pace, and brilliant in 
action. 

Neither did society, or that portion which he saw, excite or 
amuse him overmuch. In spite of his brag and boast to the 
contrary, he was too young as yet for women’s society, which 
probably can only be had in perfection when a man has ceased 
to think about his own person, and has given up all designs of 
being a conqueror of ladies ; he was too young to be admitted 
as an equal amongst men who had made their mark in the 
world, and of whose conversation he could scarcely as yet 
expect to be more than a listener. And he was too old for the 
men of pleasure of his own age ; too much a man of pleasure 
for the men of business ; destined in a word to be a good deal 
alone. Fate awards this lot of solitude to many a man ; and 
many like it from taste, as many without difficulty bear it. 
Pendennis, in reality, suffered it very equanimously ; but in 
words, and according to his wont, grumbled over it not a little. 

“What a nice little artless creature that was,” Mr. Pen 
thought at the very instant of waking after the Vauxhall 
affair ; “ what a pretty natural manner she has ; how much 
pleasanter than the minauderies of the young ladies in the ball- 
rooms ” (and here he recalled to himself some instances, of 



A VISITOR AT SHEPHERD’S INN 







PEND ENNIS. 


489 

what he could not help seeing, was the artful simplicity of Miss 
Blanche, and some of the stupid graces of other young ladies 
in the polite world) ; “ who could have thought that such a 
pretty rose could grow in a porter’s lodge, or bloom in that 
dismal old flower-pot of a Shepherd’s Inn ? So she learns to 
sing from old Bows ? If her singing voice is as sweet as her 
speaking voice, it must be pretty. I like those low voilees 
voices. ‘ What would you like me to call you ? ’ indeed. Poor 
little Fanny ! It went to my heart to adopt the grand air with 
her, and tell her to call me, ‘ sir.’ But we’ll have no nonsense 
of that sort — no Faust and Margaret business for me. That 
old Bows ! So he teaches her to sing, does he ? He’s a dear 
old fellow, old Bows : a gentleman in those old clothes : a 
philosopher, and with a kind heart, too. How good he was to 
me in the Fotheringay business. He, too, has had his griefs 
and his sorrows. I must cultivate old Bows. A man ought 
to see people of all sorts. I am getting tired of genteel society. 
Besides, there’s nobody in town. Yes, I’ll go and see Bows, 
and Costigan too : what a rich character ! begad, I’ll study 
him, and put him into a book.” In this way our young anthro- 
pologist talked with himself ; and as Saturday was the holiday 
of the week, the “ Pall Mall Gazette ” making its appearance 
upon that day, and the contributors to that journal having no 
further calls upon their brains or ink-bottles, Mr. Pendennis 
determined he would take advantage of his leisure, and pay a 
visit to Shepherd’s Inn — of course to see old Bows. 

The truth is, that if Arthur had been the most determined 
roue and artful Lovelace who ever set about deceiving a young 
girl, he could hardly have adopted better means for fascinating 
and overcoming poor little Fanny Bolton than those which he 
had employed on the previous night. His dandified protect- 
ing air, his conceit, generosity, and good-humor, the very sense 
of good and honesty which had enabled him to check the 
tremulous advances of the young creature, and not to take 
advantage of that little fluttering sensibility, — his faults and 
his virtues at once contributed to make her admire him ; and 
if we could peep into Fanny’s bed (which she shared in a cup- 
board, along with those two little sisters to whom we have seen 
Mr. Costigan administering gingerbread and apples), we should 
find the poor little maid tossing upon her mattress, to the great 
disturbance of its other two occupants, and thinking over all 
the delights and events of that delightful, eventful night, and 
all the words, looks, and actions of Arthur, its splendid hero. 
Many novels had Fanny read, in secret and at home, in three 


PEND ENNIS. 


49 ° 

volumes and in numbers. Periodical literature had not reached 
the height which it has attained subsequently, and the girls of 
Fanny’s generation were not enabled to purchase sixteen pages 
of excitement for a penny, rich with histories of crime, murder, 
oppressed virtue, and the heartless seductions of the aristocracy ; 
but she had had the benefit of the circulating library which, in 
conjunction with her school and a small brandy-ball and millin- 
ery business, Miss Minifer kept, — and Arthur appeared to her 
at once as the type and realization of all the heroes of all those 
darling greasy volumes which the young girl had devoured. Mr. 
Pen, we have seen, was rather a dandy about shirts and haber- 
dashery in general. Fanny had looked with delight at the 
fineness of his linen, at the brilliancy of his shirt studs, at his 
elegant cambric pocket-handkerchief and white gloves, and at 
the jetty brightness of his charming boots. The Prince had 
appeared and subjugated the poor little handmaid. His image 
traversed constantly her restless slumbers ; the tone of his 
voice, the blue light of his eyes, the generous look, half love 
half pity, — the manly protecting smile, the frank, winning 
laughter, — all these were repeated in the girl’s fond memory. 
She felt still his arm encircling her, and saw him smiling so 
grand as he filled up that delicious glass of champagne. And 
then she thought of the girls, her friends, who used to sneer at 
her — of Emma Baker, who was so proud, forsooth, because she 
was engaged to a cheesemonger, in a white apron, near Clare 
Market ; and of Betsy Rodgers, who made such a to-do about 
her young man — an attorney’s clerk, indeed, that w'ent about 
with a bag ! 

So that, about two o’clock in the afternoon — the Bolton 
family having concluded their dinner (and Mr. B., who besides 
his place of porter of the Inn, was in the employ of Messrs. 
Tressler, the eminent undertakers of the Strand, being absent 
in the country with the Countess of Estrich’s hearse), when 
a gentleman in a white hat and white trowsers made his ap- 
pearance under the Inn archway, and stopped at the porter’s 
wicket, Fanny was not in the least surprised, only delighted, 
only happy, and blushing beyond all measure. She knew it 
could be no other than He. She knew He’d come. There he 
was there was his Royal Highness beaming upon her from 
the gate. She called to her mother, who was busy in the upper 
apartment, “ Mamma, mamma,” and ran to the wicket at once, 
and opened it, pushing aside the other children. How she 
blushed as she gave her hand to him ! How affably he took off 
his white hat as he came in ; the children staring up at him 1 


PENDENNIS. 


49 1 

He asked Mrs. Bolton if she had slept well, after the fatigues of 
the night, and hoped she had no headache ; and he said that 
as he was going that way, he could not pass the door without 
asking news of his little partner. 

Mrs. Bolton was perhaps rather shy and suspicious about 
these advances ; but Mr. Pen’s good-humor was inexhaustible ; 
he could not see that he was unwelcome. He looked about 
the premises for a seat, and none being disengaged — for a dish- 
cover was on one, a work-box on the other, and so forth — he 
took one of the children’s chairs, and perched himself upon 
that uncomfortable eminence. At this, the children began 
laughing, the child Fanny louder than all — at least, she was 
more amused than any of them, and amazed at his Royal 
Highness’s condescension. He to sit down in that chair — that 
little child’s chair! — Many and many a time after, she regarded 
it : haven’t we almost all such furniture in our rooms, that our 
fancy peoples with dear figures, that our memory fills with 
sweet smiling faces, which may never look on us more ? 

So Pen sat down and talked away with great volubility to 
Mrs. Bolton. He asked about the undertaking business, and 
how many mutes went down with Lady Estrich’s remains ; and 
about the Inn, and who lived there. He seemed very much 
interested about Mr. Campion’s cab and horse, and had met 
that gentleman in society. He thought he should like shares 
in the Polwheedle and Tredyddlum ; did Mrs. Bolton do for 
those chambers ? Were there any chambers to let in the Inn ? 
It was better than the Temple : he should like to come to live 
in Shepherd’s Inn. As for Captain Strong, and — Colonel 
Altamont — was his name ? he was deeply interested in them 
too. The Captain was an old friend at home. Ho had dined 
with him at chambers here, before the Colonel came to live 
with him. What sort of man was the Colonel ? Wasn’t he a 
stout man, with a large quantity of jewelry, and a wig and 
large black whiskers — very black (here Pen was immensely 
waggish, and caused hysteric giggles of delight from the ladies) 
. — very black indeed ; in fact, blue-black ; that is to say, a rich 
greenish purple ? That was the man ; he had met him, too, at 
Sir Fr * * * in society. 

“ Oh, we know,” said the ladies, “ Sir F. is Sir F. 

Clavering : he’s often here : two or three times a week with the 
Captain. My little boy has been out for bill stamps for him. 
Oh Lor ! I beg pardon, I shouldn’t have mentioned no secrets,” 
Mrs. Bolton blurted out, being talked perfectly into good- 
nature by this time. “But we know you to be a gentleman, 


PENDENNIS. 


49 2 

Mr. Pendennis, for I’m sure you have shown that you can 
beayve as such. Hasn’t Mr. Pendennis, Fanny ? ” 

Fanny loved her mother for that speech. She cast up her 
dark eyes to the low ceiling and said, “ Oh, that he has, I’m 
sure, ma,” with a voice full of feeling. 

Pen was rather curious about the bill stamps, and concern- 
ing the transactions in Strong’s chambers. And he asked, 
when Altamont came and joined the Chevalier, whether he too 
sent out for bill stamps, who he was, whether he saw many 
people, and so forth. These questions, put with considerable 
adroitness by Pen, who was interested about Sir Francis 
Clavering’s doings from private motives of his own, were art- 
lessly answered by Mrs. Bolton, and to the utmost of her knowl- 
edge and ability, which, in truth, were not very great. 

These questions answered, and Pen being at a loss for more, 
luckily recollected his privilege as a member of the Press, and 
asked the ladies whether they would like any orders for the 
play? The play was their delight, as it is almost always the 
delight of every theatrical person. When Bolton was away 
professionally (it appeared that of late the porter of Shepherd’s 
Inn had taken a serious turn, drank a good deal, and otherwise 
made himself unpleasant to the ladies of his family), they would 
like of all things to slip out and go to the theatre — little Barney, 
their son, keeping the lodge : and Mr. Pendennis’s most gen- 
erous and most genteel compliment of orders was received 
with boundless gratitude by both mother and daughter. 

Fanny clapped her hands with pleasure : her face beamed 
with it. She looked and nodded, and laughed at her mamma, 
who nodded and laughed in her turn. Mrs. Bolton was not 
superannuated for pleasure yet, or by any means too old for 
admiration, she thought. And very likely Mr. Pendennis, in 
his conversation with her, had insinuated some compliments, 
or shaped his talk so as to please her. At first, against Pen, and 
suspicious of him, she was his partisan now, and almost as en- 
thusiastic about him as her daughter. When two women get 
together to like a man, they help each other on — each pushes 
the other forward — and the second, out of sheer sympathy, 
becomes as eager as the principal : at least, so it is said by 
philosophers who have examined this science. 

So the offer of the play-tickets, and other pleasantries, put 
all parties into perfect good-humor, except for one brief mo- 
ment, when one of the younger children, hearing the name of 
“ Astley’s ” pronounced, came forward and stated that she 
should like very much to go, too; on which, Fanny said, 


PENDENNIS. 


493 


“ Don’t bother ! ” rather sharply; and mamma said, “Git-long, 
Betsy-Jane, do now, and play in the court:” so that the two 
little ones, namely, Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann, went away in 
their little innocent pinafores, and disported in the court-yard 
on the smooth gravel, round about the statue of Shepherd the 
Great. 

And here, as they were playing, they very possibly commu- 
nicated with an old friend of theirs and dweller in the Inn ; for 
while Pen was making himself agreeable to the ladies at the 
lodge, who were laughing delighted at his sallies, an old gentle- 
man passed under the archway from the Inn Square, and came 
and looked in at the door of the lodge. 

He made a very blank and rueful face when he saw Mr. 
Arthur seated upon a table, like Macheath in the play, in easy 
discourse with Mrs. Bolton and her daughter. 

“ What ! Mr. Bows ? How d’you do, Bows ? ” cried out 
Pen, in a cheery, loud voice. “ I was coming to see you, and 
was asking your address of these ladies.” 

“ You were coming to see me, were you, sir? ” Bows said, 
and came in with a sad face, and shook hands with Arthur. 
“Plague on that old man!” somebody thought in the room; 
and so, perhaps, some one else besides her. 


CHAPTER XLVIII. 
in shepherd’s inn. 

Our friend Pen said, “ How d’ye do, Mr. Bows ? ” in a loud 
cheery voice on perceiving that gentleman, and saluted him in 
a dashing off-hand manner, yet you could have seen a blush 
upon Arthur’s face (answered by Fanny, whose cheek straight- 
way threw out a similar fluttering red signal) ; and after Bows 
and Arthur had shaken hands, and the former had ironically 
accepted the other’s assertion that he was about to pay Mr. 
Costigan’s chambers a visit, there was a gloomy and rather 
guilty silence in the company, which Pen presently tried to dis- 
pel by making a great rattling and noise. The silence of course 
departed at "Mr. Arthur’s noise, but the gloom remained and 
deepened, as the darkness dees in a vault if you light up a 


PEND ENNIS. 


494 

single taper in it. Pendennis tried to describe, in a jocular 
manner, the transactions of the night previous, and attempted 
to give an imitation of Costigan vainly expostulating with the 
check-taker at Vauxhall. It was not a good imitation. What 
stranger can imitate that perfection ? Nobody laughed. Mrs. 
Bolton did not in the least understand what part Mr. Pendennis 
was performing, and whether it was the check-taker or the Cap- 
tain he was taking off. Fanny wore an alarmed face, and tried 
a timid giggle ; old Mr. Bows looked as glum as when he 
fiddled in the orchestra, or played a difficult piece upon the old 
piano at the Back Kitchen. Pen felt that his story was a failure ; 
his voice sank and dwindled away dismally at the end of it — 
flickered, and went out; and it was all dark again. You could 
kear the ticket-porter, who lolls about Shepherd’s Inn, as he 
passed on the flags under the archway : the clink of his boot- 
heels was noted by everybody. 

“ You were coming to see me, sir,” Mr. Bows said. “Won’t 
you have the kindness to walk up to my chambers with me ? 
You do them a great honor, I am sure. They are rather high 
up ; but — ” 

“ Oh ! I live in a garret myself, and Shepherd’s Inn is 
twice as cheerful as Lamb’s Court,” Mr. Pendennis broke in. 

“ I knew that you had third floor apartments,” Mr. Bows 
said ; “ and was going to say — you will please not take my re- 
mark as discourteous — that the air up three pair of stairs is 
wholesomer for gentlemen, than the air of a porter’s lodge.” 

“ Sir ! ” said Pen, whose candle flamed up again in his 
wrath, and who was disposed to be as quarrelsome as men are 
when they are in the wrong, “ Will you permit me to choose 
my society without — ” 

“ You were so polite as to say that you were about to honor 
my umble domicile with a visit,” Mr. Bows said, with his sad 
voice. “ Shall I show you the way ? Mr. Pendennis and I are 
old friends, Mrs. Bolton — very old acquaintances ; and at the 
earliest dawn of his life we crossed each other.” 

The old man pointed towards the door with a trembling 
finger, and a hat in the other hand, and in an attitude slightly 
theatrical ; so were his words when he spoke somewhat artifi- 
cial, and chosen from the vocabulary which he had heard all 
his life from the painted lips of the orators before the stage- 
lamps. But he was not acting or masquerading, as Pen knew 
very well, though he was disposed to pooh-pooh the old fellow’s 
milo-dramatic airs. “ Come along, sir,” he said, “ as you are 
so very pressing. Mrs. Bolton, I wish you a good-day. Good- 


PENDENNIS. 


495 

by, Miss Fanny ; I shall always think of our night at Vauxhall 
with pleasure ; and be sure I will remember the theatre tickets.” 
And he took her hand, pressed it, was pressed by it, and was 
gone. 

“ What a nice young man, to be sure ! ” cried Mrs. Bolton. 

“ D’you think so, ma ? ” said Fanny. 

“ I was a-thinkin’ who he was like. When I was at the 
Wells with Mrs. Serle,” Mrs. Bolton continued, looking through 
the window-curtain after Pen, as he went up the court with 
Bows : “ there was a young gentleman from the City, that used 
to come in a tilbry, in a white at, the very image of him, only 
his whiskers was black, and Mr. P.’s is red.” 

“ Law, ma ! they are a most beautiful hawburn,” Fanny 
said. 

“ He used to come for Emly Budd, who danced Columbine 
in ‘Arleykin Ornpipe, or the Battle of Navarino,’ when Miss 
De la Bosky was took ill — a pretty dancer, and a fine stage- 
figure of a woman — and he was a great sugar-baker in the City, 
with a country ouse at Omerton ; and he used to drive her in 
the tilbry down Goswell Street Road ; and one day they drove 
and was married at St. Bartholomew’s Church, Smithfield, 
where they ad their bands read quite private ; and she now 
keeps her carriage, and I sor her name in the paper as patron- 
ess of the Manshing House Ball for the Washy women’s Asy- 
lum. And look at Lady Mirabel — Capting Costigan’s daughter 
— she was profeshnl, as all very well know.” Thus, and more 
to this purpose, Mrs. Bolton spoke, now peeping through the 
window-curtain, now cleaning the mugs and plates, and con- 
signing them to their place in the corner cupboard ; and finish- 
ing her speech as she and Fanny shook out and folded up the 
dinner-cloth between them, and restored it to its drawer in the 
table. 

Although Costigan had once before been made pretty ac- 
curately to understand what Pen’s pecuniary means and expec- 
tations were, I suppose Cos had forgotten the information 
acquired at Chatteris years ago, or had been induced by his 
natural enthusiasm to exaggerate his friend’s income. He had 
described Fairoaks Park in the most glowing terms to Mrs. 
Bolton, on the preceding evening, as he was walking about with 
her during Pen’s little escapade with Fanny, had dilated upon 
the enormous wealth of Pen’s famous uncle, the Major, and 
shown an intimate acquaintance with Arthur’s funded and 
landed property. Very likely Mrs. Bolton, in her wisdom, had 
speculated upon these matters during the night; and had had 


PENDENNIS. 


496 

visions of Fanny driving in her carriage, like Mrs. Bolton’s old 
comiade, the dancer of Sadler’s Wells. 

In the last operation of table-cloth folding, these two foolish 
women, of necessity, came close together; and as Fanny took 
the cloth and gave it the last fold, her mother put her finger 
under the young girl’s chin, and kissed her. Again the red 
signal flew out, and fluttered on Fanny’s cheek. What did it 
mean ? It was not alarm this time. It was pleasure which 
caused the poor little Fanny to blush so. Poor little Fanny ! 
What ! is love sin, that it is so pleasant at the beginning, and 
so bitter at the end ? 

After the embrace, Mrs. Bolton thought proper to say that 
she was a-going out upon business, and that Fanny must keep 
the lodge ; which Fanny, after a very faint objection indeed, 
consented to do. So Mrs. Bolton took her bonnet and market- 
basket, and departed ; and the instant she was gone, Fanny went 
and sat by the window which commanded Bows’s door, and 
never once took her eyes away from that quarter of Shepherd’s 
Inn. 

Betsy-Jane and Ameliar-Ann were buzzing in one corner of 
tH place, and making believe to read out of a picture-book, 
which one of them held topsy-turvy. It was a grave and 
dreadful tract, of Mr. Bolton’s collection. Fanny did not hear 
’fcer sisters prattling over it. She noticed nothing but Bows’s 
door. 

At last she gave a little shake, and her eyes lighted up. 
He had come out. He would pass the door again. But her 
fyoor little countenance fell in an instant more. Pendennis, 
indeed, came out ; but Bows followed after him. They passed 
Under the archway together. He only took off his hat, and 
bowed as he looked in. He did not stop to speak. 

In three or four minutes — Fanny did not know how long, 
but she looked furiously at him when he came into the lodge — 
Bows returned alone, and entered into the porter’s room. 

“ Where’s your ina, dear ? ” he said to Fanny. 

“ I don’t know,” Fanny said, with an angry toss. “ I don’t 
follow ma’s steps wherever she goes, I suppose, Mr. Bows.” 

“ Am I my mother’s keeper ? ” Bows said, with his usual 
melancholy bitterness. “Come here, Betsy-Jane and Amelia- 
Ann; I’ve brought a cake for the one who can read her letters 
best, and a cake for the other who can read them the next 
best.” 

When the young ladies had undergone the examination 
through which Bows put them, they were rewarded with their 


PENDENNIS. 


497 

gingerbread medals, and went off to discuss them in the court. 
Meanwhile Fanny took out some work, and pretended to busy 
herself with it, her mind being in great excitement and anger as 
she plied her needle. Bows sat so that he could command the 
entrance from the lodge to the street. But the person whom, 
perhaps, he expected to see, never made his appearance again. 
And Mrs. Bolton came in from market, and found Mr. Bows in 
place of the person whom she had expected to see. The reader 
perhaps can guess what was his name ? 

The interview between Bows and his guest, when those two 
mounted to the apartment occupied by the former in common 
with the descendant of the Milesian kings, was not particularly 
satisfactory to either party. Pen was sulky. If Bows had 
anything on his mind, he did not care to deliver himself of his 
thoughts in the presence of Captain Costigan, who remained 
in the apartment during the whole of Pen’s visit ; having quitted 
his bed-chamber, indeed, but a very few minutes before the 
arrival of that gentleman. We have witnessed the deshabilld 
of Major Pendennis : will any man wish to be valet-de-chambre 
to our other hero, Costigan ? It would seem that the Captain, 
before issuing from his bedroom, scented himself with otto of 
whiskey. A rich odor of that delicious perfume breathed from 
out him, as he held out the grasp of cordiality to his visitor. 
The hand which performed that grasp shook wofully : it was a 
wonder how it could hold the razor with which the poor gentle- 
man daily operated on his chin. 

Bows’s room was as neat, on the other hand, as his comrade’s 
w T as disorderly. His humble wardrobe hung behind a curtain. 
His books and manuscript music were trimly arranged upon 
shelves. A lithographed portrait of Miss Fotheringay, as Mrs. 
Haller, with the actress’ sprawling signature at the corner, hung 
faithfully over the old gentleman’s bed. Lady Mirabel wrote 
much better than Miss Fotheringay had been able to do. Her 
Ladyship had labored assiduously to acquire the art of pen- 
manship since her marriage ; and in a common note of invita- 
tion or acceptance, acquitted herself very genteelly. Bows 
loved the old handwriting best, though ; the fair artist’s earlier 
manner. He had but one specimen of the new style, a note 
in reply to a song composed and dedicated to Lady Mirabel, 
by her most humble servant Robert Bows ; and which document 
was treasured in his desk among his other state papers. He 
was teaching Fanny Bolton now to sing and to write, as he had 
taught Emily in former days. It was the nature of the man to 
attach himself to something. When Emily was torn from him 

3 2 


PENDENNIS. 


498 

he took a substitute : as a man looks out for a crutch when he 
loses a leg, or lashes himself to a raft when he has suffered 
shipwreck. Latude had given his heart to a woman, no doubt, 
before he grew to be so fond of a mouse in the Bastile. There 
are people who in their youth have felt and inspired an heroic 
passion, and end by being happy in the caresses, or agitated by 
the illness, of a poodle. But it was hard upon Bows, and grat- 
ing to his feelings as a man and a sentimentalist, that he should 
find Pen again upon his track, and in pursuit of his little 
Fanny. 

Meanwhile, Costigan had not the least idea but that his 
company was perfectly welcome to Messrs. Pendennis and 
Bows, and that the visit of the former was intended for himself. 
He expressed himself greatly pleased with that mark of po- 
loightness, and promised, in his own mind, that he would repay 
that obligation at least, which was not the only debt which the 
Captain owed in life, by several visits to his young friend. He 
entertained him affably with news of the day, or rather of ten 
days previous ; for Pen, in his quality of Journalist, remembered 
to have seen some of the Captain’s opinions in the Sporting 
and Theatrical Newspaper, which was Costigan’s oracle. He 
stated that Sir Charles and Lady Mirabel were gone to Baden- 
Baden, and were most pressing in their invitations that he 
should join them there. Pen replied, with great gravity, that he 
had heard that Baden was very pleasant, and the Grand Duke 
exceedingly hospitable to English. Costigan answered, that the 
laws of hospitalitee bekeam a Grand Juke ; that he sariously 
would think about visiting him ; and made some remarks upon 
the splendid festivities at Dublin Castle, when his Excellency 
the Earl of Portansherry held the Vice-raygal Coort there, and 
of which he Costigan had been a humble but pleased spectator. 
And Pen — as he heard these oft-told well-remembered legends 
— recollected the time when he had given a sort of credence to 
them, and had a certain respect for the Captain. Emily and 
first love, and the little room at Chatteris, and the kind talk 
with Bows on the bridge, came back to him. He felt quite 
kindly disposed towards his two old friends ; and cordially 
shook the hands of both of them when he rose to go away. 

He had quite forgotten about little Fanny Bolton whilst the 
Captain was talking, and Pen himself was absorbed in other 
selfish meditations. He only remembered her again as Bows 
came hobbling down the stairs after him, bent evidently upon 
following him out of Shepherd’s Inn. 

Mr. Bows’s precaution was not a lucky one. The wrath of 


PENDENNIS. 


499 

Mr. Arthur Pendennis rose at the poor old fellow’s feeble pre. 
caution. Confound him, what does he mean by dogging me ? 
thought Pen. And he burst out laughing when he was in the 
Strand and by himself, as he thought of the elder’s stratagem. 
It was not an honest laugh, Arthur Pendennis. Perhaps the 
thought struck Arthur himself, and he blushed at his own 
sense of humor. 

He went off to endeavor to banish the thoughts which occu- 
pied him, whatever those thoughts might be, and tried various 
places of amusement with but indifferent success. He strug- 
gled up the highest stairs of the Panorama ; but when he had 
arrived, panting, at the height of the eminence, Care had come 
up with him, and was bearing him company. He went to the 
Club, and wrote a long letter home, exceedingly witty and sar- 
castic, and in which, if he did not say a single word about Vaux- 
hall and Fanny Bolton, it was because he thought that subject, 
however interesting to himself, would not be very interesting to 
his mother and Laura. Nor could the novels or the library 
table fix his attention, nor the grave and respectable Jawkins 
(the only man in town), who wished to engage him in conversa- 
tion ; nor any of the amusements which he tried, after flying 
from Jawkins. He passed a Comic Theatre on his way home, 
and saw “ Stunning Farce,” “ Roars of Laughter,” “ Good Old 
English Fun and Frolic,” placarded in vermilion letters on the 
gate. He went into the pit, and saw the lovely Mrs. Leary, as 
usual, in a man’s attire ; and that eminent buffo actor, Tom 
Horseman, dressed as a woman. H<*rseman’s travestie seemed 
to him a horrid and hideous degradation ; Mrs. Leary’s glances 
and ankles had not the least effect. He laughed again, and 
bitterly, to himself, as he thought of the effect which she had 
produced upon him, on the first night of his arrival in London, 
a short time — what a long long time ago ! 


CHAPTER XLXIX. 

IN OR NEAR THE TEMPLE GARDEN. 

Fashion has long since deserted the green and pretty 
Temple Garden, in which Shakspeare makes York and Lancas- 
ter to pluck the innocent white and red roses which became the 
badges of their bloody wars; and the learned and pleasant 


PENDENNIS . 


500 

writer of the “ Handbook of London” tells us that “the com- 
monest and hardiest kind of rose has long ceased to put forth 
a bud ” in that smoky air. Not many of the present occupiers 
of the buildings round about the quarter know or care, very 
likely, whether or not roses grow there, or pass the old gate, 
except on their way to chambers. The attorneys’ clerks don’t 
carry flowers in their bags, or posies under their arms, as they 
run to the counsel’s chambers — the few lawyers who take con- 
stitutional walks think very little about York and Lancaster, 
especially since the railroad business is over. Only antiqua- 
rians and literary amateurs care to look at the gardens with 
much interest, and fancy good Sir Roger de Coverley and Mr. 
Spectator with his short face pacing up and down the road ; or 
dear Oliver Goldsmith in the summer-house, perhaps meditating 
about the next “ Citizen of the World,” or the new suit that Mr. 
Filby, the tailor, is fashioning for him, or the dunning letter 
that Mr. Newbery has sent. Treading heavily on the gravel, 
and rolling majestically along in a snuff-colored suit, and a wig 
that sadly wants the barber’s powder and irons, one sees the 
Great Doctor step up to him.(his Scotch lackey following at the 
lexicographer’s heels, a little the worse for port-wine that they 
had been taking at the Mitre), and Mr. Johnson asks Mr. 
Goldsmith to come home and take a dish of tea with Miss 
Williams. Kind faith of Fancy. Sir Roger and Mr. Specta- 
tor are as real to us now as the two doctors and the boozy and 
faithful Scotchman. The poetical figures live in our memory 
just as much as the real personages, — and as Mr. Arthur Pen- 
dennis was of a romantic and literary turn, by no means addicted 
to the legal pursuits common in the neighborhood of the place, 
we may presume that he was cherishing some such poetical 
reflections as these, when, upon the evening after the events 
recorded in the last chapter, the young gentleman chose the 
Temple Gardens as a place for exercise and meditation. 

On the Sunday evening, the Temple is commonly calm. 
The chambers are for the most part vacant : the great lawyers 
are giving grand dinner-parties at their houses in the Belgra- 
vian or Tyburnian districts ; the agreeable young barristers are 
absent, attending those parties, and paying their respects to Mr. 
Kewsy’s excellent claret, or Mr. Justice Ermine’s accomplished 
daughters : the uninvited are partaking of the economic joint, 
and the modest half-pint of wine at the Club, entertaining them- 
selves, and the rest of the company in the Club-room, with 
Circuit jokes and points of wit and law. Nobody is in cham- 
bers at all, except poor Mr. Cockle, who is ill, and whose laun- 


PENDENNIS. 


5 °* 

dress is making him gruel ; or Mr. Toodle, who is an amateur 
of the flute, and whom you may hear piping solitary from his 
chambers in the second floor ; or young Tiger, the student, from 
whose open windows comes a great gush of cigar smoke, and at 
whose door are a quantity of dishes- and covers, bearing the 
insignia of Dicks’ or the Cock. But stop ! Whither does 
Fancy lead us? It is vacation time ; and with the exception of 
Pendennis, nobody is in chambers at all. 

Perhaps it was solitude, then, which drove Pen into the 
garden ; for although he had never before passed the gate, and 
had looked rather carelessly at the pretty flower-beds, and the 
groups of pleased citizens sauntering over the trim lawn and 
the broad gravel-walks by the river, on this evening it happened, 
as we have said, that the young gentleman, who had dined alone 
at a tavern in the neighborhood of the Temple, took a fancy, 
as he was returning home to his chambers, to take a little walk 
in the gardens, and enjoy the fresh evening air, and the sight 
of the shining Thames. After walking for a brief space, and 
looking at the many peaceful and happy groups round about 
him, he grew tired of the exercise, and betook himself to one 
of the summer-houses which flank either end of the main walk, 
and there modestly seated himself. What were his cogitations ? 
The evening was delightfully bright and calm ; the sky was 
cloudless ; the chimneys on the opposite bank were not smok- 
ing ; the wharves and warehouses looked rosy in the sunshine, 
and as clear as if they, too, had washed for the holiday. The 
steamers rushed rapidly up and down the stream, laden with 
holiday passengers. The bells of the multitudinous City churches 
were ringing to evening prayers, — such peaceful Sabbath even- 
ings as this Pen may have remembered in his early days, as he 
paced, wdth his arm round his mother’s waist, on the terrace 
before the lawn at home. The sun was lighting up the little 
Brawl, too, as well as the broad Thames, and sinking down- 
wards majestically behind the Clavering elms, and the tower 
of the familiar village church. Was it thoughts of these, or 
the sunset merely, that caused the blush on the young man’s 
face ? He beat time on the bench to the chorus of the bells 
without ; flicked the dust off his shining boots with his pocket- 
handkerchief, and starting up, stamped with his foot and said, 
“ No, by Jove, I’ll go home.” And with this resolution, which 
indicated that some struggle as to the propriety of remaining 
where he was, or of quitting the garden, had been' going on in 
his mind, he stepped out of the summer-house. 

He nearly knocked down two little children, who did not 


PENDENNIS. 


5°2 

indeed reach much higher than his knee, and were trotting along 
the gravel-walk, with their long blue shadows slanting towards 
the east. 

One cried out “ Oh ! ” the other began to laugh ; and with 
a knowing little infantine chuckle, said, “ Missa Pendennis ! ” 
And Arthur, looking down, saw his two little friends of the 
day before, Mesdemoiselles Ameliar-Ann and Betsy-Jane. He 
blushed more than ever at seeing them, and seizing the one 
whom he had nearly upset, jumped her up into the air, and 
kissed her: at which sudden assault Ameliar-Ann began to cry 
in great alarm. 

This cry brought up instantly two ladies in clean collars and 
new ribbons, and grand shawls, namely : Mrs. Bolton in a rich 
scarlet Caledonian Cashmere, and a black silk dress, and Miss 
F. Bolton with a yellow scarf and a sweet sprigged muslin, and 
a parasol — quite the lady. Fanny did not say one single word : 
though her eyes flashed a welcome, and shone as bright — as 
bright as the most blazing windows in Paper Buildings. But 
Mrs. Bolton, after admonishing Betsy-Jane, said, “Lor, sir — 
how very odd that we should meet you year ? I ope you ave 
your ealth well, sir. — Ain’t it odd, Fanny, that we should meet 
Mr. Pendennis ? ” What do you mean by sniggering, Mes- 
dames ? When young Croesus has been staying at a country- 
house, have you never, by any singular coincidence, been walk- 
ing with your Fanny in the shrubberies ? Have you and yoqr 
Fanny never happened to be listening to the band of the 
Heavies at Brighton, when young De Boots and Captain Pad- 
more came clinking down the Pier ? Have you and your dar- 
ling Frances never chanced to be visiting old widow Wheezy at 
the cottage on the common, when the young curate has stepped 
in with a tract adapted to the rheumatism ? Do you suppose 
that, if singular coincidences occur at the Hall, they don’t also 
happen at the Lodge ? 

It was a coincidence, no doubt : that was all. In the course 
of the conversation on the day previous, Mr. Pendennis had 
merely said, in the simplest way imaginable, and in reply to a 
question of Miss Bolton, that although some of the courts were 
gloomy, parts of the Temple were very cheerful and agreeable, 
especially the chambers looking on the river and around the 
gardens, and that the gardens were a very pleasant walk on 
Sunday evenings and frequented by a great number of people 
— and here, by the merest chance, all our acquaintances met 
together, just like so many people in genteel life. What could 
be more artless, good-natured, or natural ? 


PENDENNIS. 


5°3 

Pen looked very grave, pompous, and dandified. He was 
unusually smart and brilliant in his costume. His white duck 
trousers and white hat, his neck-cloth of many colors, his light 
waistcoat, gold chains, and shirt-studs, gave him the air of a 
prince of the blood at least. How his splendor became his 
figure ! Was anybody ever like him ? some one thought. He 
blushed — how his blushes became him ! the same individual 
said to herself. The children, on seeing him the day before, 
had been so struck with him, that after he had gone away they 
had been playing at him. And Ameliar-Ann, sticking her little 
chubby fingers into the arm-holes of her pinafore, as Pen was 
wont to do with his waistcoat, had said, “ Now, Bessy-Jane, I’ll 
be Missa Pendennis.” Fanny had laughed till she cried, and 
smothered her sister with kisses for that feat. How happy, 
too, she was to see Arthur embracing the child ! 

If Arthur was red, Fanny, on the contrary, was very worn 
and pale. Arthur remarked it, and asked kindly why she 
looked so fatigued. 

“ I was awake all night,” said Fanny, and began to blush a 
little. 

“ I put out her candle, and bordered her to go to sleep and 
leave off readin,” interposed the fond mother. 

“You were reading ? And what was it that interested you 
so ? ” asked Pen, amused. 

“ Oh, it’s so beautiful ! ” said Fanny. 

“What?” 

“ ‘ Walter Lorraine,’ ” Fanny sighed out. “How I do hate 
that Neara — Naera — I don’t know the pronunciation. And 
how I love Leonora, and Walter ; oh, how dear he is ! ” 

How had Fanny discovered the novel of ‘ Walter Lorraine,’ 
and that Pen was the author ? This little person remembered 
every single word which Mr. Pendennis had spoken on the 
night previous, and how he wrote in books and newspapers. 
What books ? She was so eager to know, that she had almost 
a mind to be civil to old Bows, who was suffering under her 
displeasure since yesterday, but she determined first to make 
application to Costigan. She began by coaxing the Captain and 
smiling upon him in her most winning way, as she helped to 
arrange his dinner and set his humble apartment in order. She 
was sure his linen wanted mending (and indeed the Captain’s 
linen-closet contained some curious specimens of manufactured 
flax and cotton). She would mend his shirts — all his shirts. 
What horrid holes — what funny holes ! She put her little face 
through one of them and laughed at the old warrior in the most 


PENDENNIS. 


5°4 

•winning manner. She would have made a funny little picture 
looking through the holes. Then she daintily removed Costigan’s 
dinner things, tripping about the room as she had seen the 
dancers do at the play ; and she danced to the Captain’s cup- 
board, and produced his whiskey-bottle, and mixed him a tum- 
bler, and must taste a drop of it — a little drop ; and the Captain 
must sing her one of his songs, his dear songs, and teach it to 
her. And when he had sung an Irish melody in his rich quaver- 
ing voice, fancying it was he who was fascinating the little 
Syren, she put her little question about Arthur Pendennis and 
his novel, and having got an answer, cared for nothing more, 
but left the Captain at the piano about to sing her another song, 
and the dinner tray on the passage, and the shirts on the chair, 
and ran down stairs, quickening her pace as she sped. 

Captain Costigan, as he said, was not a litherary cyrakter, 
nor had he as yet found time to peruse his young friend’s elly- 
gant perfaurumance, though he intended to teak an early oppor- 
chunitee of purchasing a cawpee of his work. But he knew the 
name of Pen’s novel from the fact that Messrs. Finucane, 
Bludyer, and other frequenters of the Back Kitchen, spoke of 
Mr. Pendennis (not all of them with great friendship ; for 
Bludyer called him a confounded coxcomb, and Hoolan won- 
dered that Doolan did not kick him, &c.) by the soubriquet of 
Walter Lorraine, — and was hence enabled to give Fanny the 
information which she required. 

“ And she went and ast for it at the libery,” Mrs. Bolton 
said, — “several liberies — and some ad it and it was hout, and 
some adn’t it. And one of the liberies as ad it wouldn’t let er 
ave it without a sovering : and she adn’t one, and she came 
back a-cryin to me — didn’t you, Fanny ? — and I gave her a 
sovering.” 

“ And, oh, I was in such a fright lest any one should have 
come to the libery and took it while I was away,” Fanny said, 
her cheeks and eyes glowing. “ And, oh, I do like it so ! ” 

Arthur was touched by this artless sympathy, immensely 
flattered and moved by it. “ Do you like it ? ” he said. “ If 
you will come up to my chambers 1 will — No, I will bring you 
one — no, I will send you one. Good-night. Thank you, 
Fanny. God bless you. I musn’t stay with you. Good-by, 
good-by.” And, pressing her hand once, and nodding to her 
mother and the other children, he strode out of the gardens. 

Fie quickened his pace as he went from them, and ran out 
of the gate talking to himself. “ Dear, dear little thing,” he 
said — “ darling little Fanny ! You are worth them all. I wish 


PEND ENNIS. 


5°S- 

to heaven Shandon was back. I’d go home to my mother. I 
mustn’t see her. I won’t. I won’t, so help me — ” 

As he was talking thus, and running, the passers-by turn- 
ing to look at him, he ran against a little old man, and perceived 
it was Mr. Bows. 

‘‘Your very umble servant, sir,” said Mr. Bows, making a 
sarcastic bow, and lifting his old hat from his forehead. 

“ I wish you a good-day,” Arthur answered sulkily. “ Don’t 
let me detain you, or give you the trouble to follow me again. 
I am in a hurry, sir ; good-evening.” 

Bows thought Pen . had some reason for hurrying to his 
rooms. “ Where are they ? ” exclaimed the old gentleman. 
“You know whom I mean. They’re not in your rooms, sir, 
are they ? They told Bolton they were going to church at the 
Temple ; they weren’t there. They are in your chambers : 
they musn’t stay in your chambers, Mr. Pendennis.” 

“ Damn it, sir ! ” cried out Pendennis, fiercely. “ Come and 
see if they are in my chambers : here’s the court and the door 
— come in and see.” And Bows, taking off his hat and bowing 
first, followed the young man. 

They were not in Pen’s chambers, as we know. But when 
the gardens were closed, the two women, who had had but a 
melancholy evening’s amusement, walked away sadly with the 
children, and they entered into Lamb Court, and stood under 
the lamp-post which cheerfully ornaments the centre of that 
quadrangle, and looked up to the third floor of the house where 
Pendennis’s chambers were, and where they saw a light presently 
kindled. Then this couple of fools went away, the children 
dragging wearily after them, and returned to Mr. Bolton, who 
was immersed in rum-and-water at his lodgings in Shepherd’s 
Inn. 

Mr. Bows looked round the blank room which the young 
man occupied, and which had received but very few ornaments 
or additions since the last time we saw them. Warrington’s old 
bookcase and battered library, Pen’s writing-table with its litter 
of papers, presented an aspect cheerless enough. “ Will you 
like to look in the bedrooms, Mr. Bows, and see if my victims 
are there ? ” he said bitterly ; “ or whether I have made away 
with the little girls, and hid them in the coal-hole ! ” 

“ Your word is sufficient, Mr. Pendennis,” the other said in 
his sad tone. “ You say they are not here, and I know they 
are not. And I hope they never have been here, and never will 
come.” 


PEND ENNIS. 


506 

“Upon my word, sir, you are very good, to choose my 
acquaintances for me,” Arthur said, in a haughty tone * “ and to 
suppose that anybody would be the worse for my society. I 
remember you, and owe you kindness from old times, Mr„ Bows ; 
or I should speak more angrily than I do, about a veiy intoler- 
able sort of persecution to which you seem inclined to subject 
me. You followed me out of your Inn yesterday, as if you 
wanted to watch that I shouldn’t steal something.” Here Pen 
stammered and turned red, directly he had said the words ; 
he felt he had given the other an opening, which Bows instantly 
took. 

“ I do think you came to steal something, as you say the 
words, sir,” Bows said. “ Do you mean to say that you came 
to pay a visit to poor old Bows, the fiddler ? or to Mrs. Bolton, 
at the porter’s lodge ? Oh fie ! Such a fine gentleman as Arthur 
Pendennis, Esquire, doesn’t condescend to walk up to my garret, 
or to sit in a laundress’s kitchen, but for reasons of his own. 
And my belief is that you came to steal a pretty girl’s heart 
away, and to ruin it, and to spurn it afterwards, Mr. Arthur 
Pendennis. That’s what the world makes of you young dandies, 
you gentlemen of fashion, you high and mighty aristocrats that 
trample upon the people. It’s sport to you, but what is it to 
the poor, think you ; the toys of your pleasures, whom you play 
with and whom you fling into the streets when you are tired ? I 
know your order, sir. I know your selfishness and your arro- 
gance, and your pride. What does it matter to my lord, that 
the poor man’s daughter is made miserable, and her family 
brought to shame ? You must have your pleasures, and the 
people of course must pay for them. What are we made for, 
but for that ? It’s the way with you all — the way with you 
all, sir.” 

Bows was speaking beside the question, and Pen had his 
advantage here, which he was not sorry to take — not sorry to 
put off the debate from the point upon which his adversary had 
first engaged it. Arthur broke out with a sort of laugh, for 
which he asked Bows’s pardon. “Yes, I am an aristocrat,” he 
said ; “ in a palace up three pair of stairs, with a carpet nearly 
as handsome as yours, Mr. Bows. My life is passed in grinding 
the people, is it ? — in ruining virgins and robbing the poor ? 
My good sir, this is very well in a comedy, where Job Thorn- 
berry slaps his breast, and asks my Lord how dare he trample 
on an honest man and poke out an Englishman’s fireside ; but 
in real life, Mr. Bows, to a man who has to work for his bread 
as much as you do — how can you talk about aristocrats tyran- 


PENDENNIS, 


5°7 

nizing over the people? Have I ever done you a wrong? or 
assumed airs of superiority over you ? Did you not have an 
early regard for me — in days when we were both of us romantic 
young fellows, Mr. Bows ? Come, don’t be angry with me now, 
and let us be as good friends as we were before.” 

“ Those days were very different,” Mr. Bows answered ; 
“ and Mr. Arthur Pendennis was an honest, impetuous young 
fellow then ; rather selfish and conceited, perhaps, but honest. 
And I liked you then, because you were ready to ruin yourself 
for a woman.” 

“ And now, sir ? ” Arthur asked. 

“ And now times are changed, and you want a woman to 
ruin herself for you,” Bows answered. “ I know this child, sir. 
I’ve aways said this lot was hanging over her. She has heated 
her little brain with novels, until her whole thoughts are about 
love and lovers, and she scarcely sees that she treads on a 
kitchen floor. I have taught the little thing. She is full of many 
talents and winning ways, I grant you. I am fond of the girl, 
sir, I’m a lonely old man ; I lead a life that I don’t like, 
among boon companions, who make me melancholy. I have 
but this child that I care for. Have pity upon me, and don’t 
take her away from me, Mr. Pendennis — don’t take her away.” 

The old man’s voice broke as he spoke. Its accents touched 
Pen, much more than the menacing or sarcastic tone which 
Bows had commenced by adopting. 

“ Indeed,” said he, kindly, “you do me wrong if you fancy 
I intend one to poor little Fanny. I never saw her till Friday 
night. It was the merest chance that our friend Costigan threw 
her into my way. I have no intentions regarding her — that 
is — ” 

“ That is, you know very well that she is a foolish girl, and 
her mother a foolish woman, — that is, you meet her in the 
Temple Gardens, and of course without previous concert, — that 
is, that when I found her yesterday, reading the book you’ve 
wrote, she scorned me,” Bowr; said. “What am I good for but 
to be laughed at ? a deformed old fellow like me ; an old 
fiddler that wears a threadbare coat, and gets his bread by 
playing tunes at an alehouse ? You are a fine gentleman, you 
are. You wear scent in your handkerchief, and a ring on your 
finger. You go to dine with great people. Who ever gives a 
crust to old Bows ? And yet I might have been as good a man 
as the best of you. I might have been a man of genius, if I 
had had a chance ; ay, and have lived with the master spirits 
of the land. But everything has failed with me. I’d ambition 


° ENDENNIS . 


S ' 08 

once, and wrote plays, poems, music — nobody would give me a 
hearing. I never loved a woman, but she laughed at me ; and 
here I am in my old age alone — alone ! Don’t take this girl 
from me, Mr. Pendennis, I say again. Leave her with me a 
little longer. She was like a child to me till yesterday. Why 
did you step in, and make her mock my deformity and old 
age ? ” 

“I am guiltless of that, at least,” Arthur said, with some- 
thing of a sigh. “ Upon my word of honor, I wish I had never 
seen the girl. My calling is not seduction, Mr. Bows. I did 
not imagine that I had made an impression on poor Fanny, 
until — until to-night. And then sir, I was sorry, and was flying 
from my temptation, as you came upon me. And,” he added, 
with a glow upon his cheek, which, in the gathering-darkness, 
his companion could not see, and with an audible tremor in his 
voice, “ I do not mind telling you, sir, that on this Sabbath 
evening, as the church bells were ringing, I thought of my own 
home, and of women angelically pure and good, who dwell 
there ; and was running hither, as I met you, that I might avoid 
the danger which besets me, and ask strength of God Almighty 
to do my duty.” 

After these words from Arthur a silence ensued, and when 
the conversation was resumed by his guest, the latter spoke in 
a tone which was much more gentle and friendly. And on tak- 
ing farewell of Pen, Bows asked leave to shake hands with him, 
and with a very warm and affectionate greeting on both sides, 
apologized to Arthur for having mistaken him, and paid him 
some compliments which caused the young man to squeeze his 
old friend’s hand heartily again. And as they parted at Pen’s 
door, Arthur said he had given a promise, and he hoped and 
trusted that Mr. Bows might rely on it ? 

“ Amen to that prayer,” said Mr. Bows, and went slowly 
down the stair. 


CHAPTER L. 

THE HAPPY VILLAGE AGAIN. 

Early in this history, we have had occasion to speak of 
the little town of Clavering, near which Pen’s paternal home of 
Fairoaks stood, and of some of the people who inhabited the 


PENDENNIS. 


5°9 

place ; and as the society there was by no means amusing or 
pleasant, our reports concerning it were not carried to any 
very great length. Mr. Samuel Huxter, the gentleman whose 
acquaintance we lately made at Vauxhall, was one of the choice 
spirits of the little town, when he visited it during his vacations, 
and enlivened the tables of his friends there by the wit of 
Bartholomew’s and the gossip of the fashionable London cir- 
cles which he frequented. 

Mr. Hobnell, the young gentleman whom Pen had thrashed, 
in consequence of the quarrel in the Fotheringay affair, was, 
whilst a pupil at the Grammar School at Clavering, made very 
welcome at the tea-table of Mrs. Huxter, Samuel’s mother, and 
was free of the Surgery, where he knew the way to the tamarind- 
pots, and could scent his pocket-handkerchief with rose-water. 
And it was at this period of his life that he formed an attach- 
ment for Miss Sophy Huxter, whom, on his father’s demise, he 
married, and took home to his house of the Warren, a few 
miles from Clavering. 

The family had possessed and cultivated an estate there foi 
many years, as yeomen and farmers. Mr. Hobnell’s father 
pulled down the old farm-house ; built a flaring new white- 
washed mansion, with capacious stables : and a piano in the 
drawing-room ; kept a pack of harriers ; and assumed the title 
of Squire Hobnell. When he died and his son reigned in his 
stead, the family might be fairly considered to be established 
as county gentry. And Sam Huxter, at London, did no great 
wrong in boasting about his brother-in-law’s place, his hounds, 
horses, and hospitality, to his admiring comrades at Barthol- 
omew’s. Every year, at a time commonly when Mrs. Hobnell 
could not leave the increasing duties of her nursery, Hobnell 
came up to London for a lark, had rooms at the Tavistock, and 
he and Sam indulged in the pleasures of the town together. Ascot, 
the theatres, Vauxhall, and the convivial taverns in the joyous 
neighborhood of Covent Garden, were visited by the vivacious 
squire, in company with his learned brother. When he was in 
London, as he said, he liked to do as London does, and to “ go it 
a bit,” and when he returned to the west, he took a new bonnet 
and shawl to Mrs. Hobnell, and relinquished, for country sports 
and occupations during the next eleven months, the elegant 
amusements of London life. 

Sam Huxter kept up a correspondence with his relative, and 
supplied him with choice news of the metropolis, in return for the 
baskets of hares, partridges, and clouted cream which the 
squire and his good-natured wife ^ forwarded to Sam. A youth 


PEND ENiVIS. 


5 IQ 

more brilliant and distinguished they did not know. He was 
the life and soul of their house, when he made his appearance 
in his native place. His songs, jokes, and fun kept the 
Warren in a roar. He had saved their eldest darling’s life, by 
taking a fish-bone out of her throat : in fine, he was the delight 
of their circle. 

As ill-luck would have it, Pen again fell in with Mr. Huxter, 
only three days after the rencontre at Vauxhall. Faithful to 
his vow, he had not been to see little Fanny. He was trying 
to drive her from his mind by occupation, or other mental ex- 
citement. He labored, though not to much profit, incessantly 
in his rooms ; and, in his capacity of critic for the “ Pall Mall 
Gazette,” made woeful and savage onslaught on a poem and a 
romance which came before him for judgment. These authors 
slain, he went to dine alone at the lonely club of the Polyan- 
thus,, where the vast solitudes frightened him, and made him 
only the more moody. He had been to more theatres for re- 
laxation. The whole house was roaring with laughter and ap- 
plause, and he saw only an ignoble farce that made him sad. 
It would have damped the spirits of the buffoon on the stage 
to have seen Pen’s dismal face. He hardly knew what was 
happening ; the scene and the drama passed before him like a 
dream or a fever. Then he thought he would go to the Back 
Kitchen, his old haunt with Warrington — he was not a bit 
sleepy yet. The day before he had walked twenty miles in 
search of rest, over Hampstead Common' and Hendon lanes, 
and had got no sleep at night. He would go to the Back 
Kitchen. It was a sort of comfort to him to think he should 
see Bows. Bows was there, very calm, presiding at the old 
piano. Some tremendous comic songs were sung, which made 
the room crack with laughter. How strange they seemed to 
Pen ! He could only see Bows. In an extinct volcano, such 
as he boasted that his breast was, it was wonderful how he 
should feel such a flame ! Two days’ indulgence had kindled 
it; two days’ abstinence had set it burning in fury. So, 
musing upon this, and drinking down one glass after another, as 
ill-luck would have it, Arthur’s eyes lighted upon Mr. Huxter, 
who had been to the theatre, like himself, and, with two or 
three comrades, now entered the room. Huxter whispered to 
his companions, greatly to Pen’s annoyance. Arthur felt that 
the other was talking about him. Huxter then worked through 
the room, followed by his friends, and came and took a place 
opposite to Pen, nodding familiarly to him, and holding him 
out a dirty hand to shake. 


PENDENNIS : 


5*i 

Pen shook hands with his fellow-townsman. He thought 
he had been needlessly savage to him on the last night when 
they had met. As for Huxter, perfectly at good-humor with 
himself and the world, it never entered his mind that he could 
be disagreeable to anybody ; and the little dispute, or “ chaff,” 
as he styled it, of Vauxhall, was a trifle which he did not in 
the least regard. 

The disciple of Galen having called for “ four stouts,” with 
which he and his party refreshed themselves, began to think 
what would be the most amusing topic of conversation with 
Pen, and hit upon that precise one which was most painful to 
our young gentleman. 

“ Jolly night at Vauxhall — wasn’t it ? ” he said, and winked 
in a very knowing way. 

“ I’m glad you liked it,” poor Pen said, groaning in spirit. 

“ I was dev’lish cut — uncommon — been dining with some 
chaps at Greenwich. That was a pretty bit of muslin hanging 
on your arm — who was she ? ” asked the fascinating student. 

The question was too much for Arthur. “ Have I asked 
you any questions about yourself, Mr. Huxter? ” he said. 

“ I didn’t mean any offence — beg pardon — hang it ! you 
cut up quite savage,” said Pen’s astonished interlocutor. 

“ Do you remember what took place between us the other 
night?” Pen asked, with gathering wrath. “You forget? 
Very probably. You were tipsy, as you observed just now, 
and very rude.” 

“ Hang it, sir, I asked your pardon,” Huxter said, looking 

red. 

“You did certainly, and it was granted with all my heart, I 
am sure. But if you recollect I begged that you would have 
the goodness to omit me from the list of your acquaintance for 
the future ? and when we met in public, that you would not 
take the trouble to recognize me. Will you please to remember 
this hereafter ? and as the song is beginning, permit me to 
leave you to the unrestrained enjoyment of the music.” 

He took his hat, and making a bow to the amazed Mr. 
Huxter, left the table, as Huxter’s comrades, after a pause of 
wonder, set up such a roar of laughter at Huxter, as called for 
the intervention of the president of the room ; who bawled out, 
“ Silence, gentlemen ; do have silence for the Body Snatcher ! ” 
which popular song began as Pen left the Back Kitchen. He 
flattered himself that he had commanded his temper perfectly. 
He rather wished that Huxter had been pugnacious. He would 
have liked to fight him or somebody. He went home. The 


PEND ENNIS. 


5 1 * 

day’s work, the dinner, the play, the whiskey-and-water, the 
quarrel — nothing soothed him. He slept no better than on 
the previous night. 

A few days afterwards, Mr. Sam Huxter wrote home a letter 
to Mr. Hobnell in the country, of which Mr. Arthur Pendennis 
formed the principal subject. Sam described Arthur’s pursuits 
in London, and his confounded insolence of behavior to his old 
friends from home. He said he was an abandoned criminal, a 
regular Don Juan, a fellow who, when he did come into the 
country, ought to be kept out of honest people's houses. He had 
seen him at Vauxhall, dancing with an innocent girl in the 
lower ranks of life, of whom he was making a victim. He had 
found out from an Irish gentleman (formerly in the army), who 
frequented a club of which he, Huxter, was member, who the 
girl was, on whom this conceited humbug was practising his 
infernal arts ; and he thought he should warn her father, &c., 
&c. — The letter then touched on general news, conveyed the 
writer’s thanks for the last parcel and the rabbits, and hinted 
his extreme readiness for further favors. 

About once a year, as we have stated, there was occasion 
for a christening at the Warren, and it happened that this cere- 
mony took place a day after Hobnell had received the letter 
of his brother-in-law in town. The infant (a darling little girl) 
was christened Mira-Lucretia, after its two godmothers, Miss 
Portman and Mrs. Pybus of Clavering, and as of course Hob- 
nell had communicated Sam’s letter to his wife, Mrs. Hobnell 
imparted its horrid contents to her two gossips. A pretty story 
it was, and prettily it was told throughout Clavering in the 
course of that day. 

Mira did not — she was too much shocked to do so — speak 
on the matter to her mamma, but Mrs. P)’bus had no such 
feelings of reserve. She talked over the matter not only with 
Mrs. Portman, but with Mr. and the Honorable Mrs. Simcoe, 
with Mrs. Glanders, her daughters being to that end ordered 
out of the room, with Madame Fribsby, and, in a word, with 
the whole of the Clavering society. Madame Fribsby looking 
furtively up at her picture of the Dragoon, and inwards into her 
own wounded memory, said that men would be men, and as 
long as they were men would be deceivers ; and she pensively 
quoted some lines from Marmion, requesting to know where 
deceiving lovers should rest ? Mrs. Pybus had no words of 
hatred, horror, contempt, strong enough for a villain who could 
be capable of conduct so base. This was what came of early 
indulgence, and insolence, and extravagance, and aristocratic 


PEND ENNIS. 


5 X 3 

airs (it is certain that Pen had refused to drink tea with Mrs. 
Pybus), and attending the corrupt and horrid parties in the 
dreadful, modern Babylon ! Mrs. Portman was afraid that she 
must acknowledge that the mother’s fatal partiality had spoiled 
this boy, that his literary successes had turned his head, and 
his horrid passions had made him forget the principles which 
Doctor Portman had instilled into him in early life. Glanders, 
the atrocious Captain of Dragoons, when informed of the occur- 
rence by Mrs. Glanders, whistled and made jocular allusions to 
it at dinner-time ; on which Mrs. Glanders called him a brute, 
and ordered the girls again out of the room, as the horrid 
Captain burst out laughing. Mrs. Simcoe was calm under the 
intelligence ; but rather pleased than otherwise ; it only served 
to confirm the opinion which he had always had of that 
wretched young man : not that he knew anything about him — 
not that he had read one line of his dangerous and poisonous 
works ; Heaven forbid that he should ! but what could be 
expected from such a youth, and such frightful, such lamentable, 
such deplorable want of seriousness ? Pen formed the subject 
for a second sermon at the Clavering chapel of ease : where 
the dangers of London, and the crime of reading or writing 
novels, were pointed out on a Sunday evening, to a large and 
warm congregation. They did not wait to hear whether he was 
guilty or not. They took his wickedness for granted : and 
with these admirable moralists, it was who should fling the 
stone at poor Pen. 

The next day Mrs. Pendennis, alone and almost fainting 
with emotion and fatigue, walked or rather ran to Dr. Portman’s 
house, to consult the good Doctor. She had had an anony- 
mous letter ; — some Christian had thought it his or her duty to 
stab the good soul who had never done mortal a wrong — an 
anonymous letter with references to Scripture, pointing out the 
doom of such sinners, and a detailed account of Pen’s crime. 
She was in a state of terror and excitement pitiable to witness. 
Two or three hours of this pain had aged her already. In her 
first moment of agitation, she had dropped the letter, and Laura 
had read it. Laura blushed when she read it ; her whole frame 
trembled, but it was with anger. “ The cowards,” she said.— 
“ It isn’t true. — No mother, it isn’t true.” 

“ It is true, and you’ve done it, Laura,” cried out Helen 
fiercely. “ Why did you refuse him when he asked you ? Why 
did you break my heart and refuse him ? It is you who led 
him into crime. It is you who flung him into the arms of this 
- — this woman. — Don't speak to me. — Don’t answer me. 1 will 


PENDENNIS. 


5*4 

never forgive you, never! Martha, bring me my bonnet and 
shawl. I’ll go out. I won’t have you come with me. Go 
away. Leave me, cruel girl ; why have you brought this shame 
on me ? ” And bidding her daughter and her servants keep 
away from her, she ran down the road to Clavering. 

Doctor Portman, glancing over the letter, thought he knew 
the handwriting, and, of course, was already acquainted with the 
charge made against poor Pen. Against his own conscience, 
perhaps (for the worthy Doctor, like most of us, had a consid- 
erable natural aptitude for receiving any report unfavorable to 
his neighbors), he strove to console Helen ; he pointed out that 
the slander came from an anonymous quarter, and therefore 
must be the work of a rascal ; that the charge might not be 
true — was not true, most likely — at least, that Pen must be 
heard before he was condemned ; that the son of such a mother 
was not likely to commit such a crime, &c., &c. 

Helen at once saw through his feint of objection and de- 
nial. “ You think he has done it,” she said, — “you know you 
think he has done it. Oh, why did I ever leave him, Doctor 
Portman, or suffer him away from me ? But he can’t be dis- 
honest — pray God, not dishonest — you don’t think that, do you ? 
Remember his conduct about that other — person — how madly 
he was attached to her. He was an honest boy then — he is 
now. And I thank God — yes, I fall down on my knees and 
thank God he paid Laura. You said he was good — you did 
yourself. And now — if this woman loves him — and you know 
they must — if he has taken her from her home, or she tempted 
him, which is most likely — why still, she must be his wife and 
my daughter. And he must leave the dreadful world and come 
back to me — to his mother, Dr. Portman. Let us go away and 
bring him back — yes, bring him back — and there shall be joy 
for the — the sinner that repenteth. Let us go now, directly, 
dear friend — this very — ” 

Helen could say no more. She fell back and fainted. She 
was carried to a bed in the house of the pitying Doctor, and 
the surgeon was called to attend her. She lay all night in an 
alarming state. Laura came to her, or to the rectory rather ; 
for she would not see Laura. And Doctor Portman, still be- 
seeching her to be tranquil, and growing bolder and more con- 
fident of Arthur’s innocence as he witnessed the terrible grief 
of the poor mother, wrote a letter to Pen warning him of" the 
rumors that were against him, and earnestly praying that he 
would break off and repent c*f a connection so fatal to his best 
interests and his soul’s welfare. 


PENDENNIS. 


5*5 

And Laura ? — was her heart not wrung by the thought of 
Arthur’s crime and Helen’s estrangement ? Was it not a bitter 
blow for the innocent girl to think that at one stroke she should 
lose all the love which she cared for in the world 1 


CHAPTER LI. 

WHICH HAD VERY NEARLY BEEN THE LAST OF THE STORY. 

Doctor Portman’s letter was sent off to its destination in 
London, and the worthy clergyman endeavored to soothe down 
Mrs. Pendennis into some state of composure until an answer 
should arrive which the Doctor tried to think, or at any rate 
persisted in saying, would be satisfactory as regarded the 
morality of Mr. Pen. At least Helen’s wish of moving upon 
London and appearing in person to warn her son of his wicked- 
ness, was impracticable for a day or two. The apothecary for- 
bade her moving even so far as Fairoaks for the first day, and 
it was not until the subsequent morning that she found herself 
again back on her sofa at home, with the faithful, though silent 
Laura, nursing at her side. 

Unluckily for himself and all parties, Pen never read that 
homily which Doctor Portman addressed to him, until many 
weeks after the epistle had been composed ; and day after day 
the widow waited for her son’s rep’y to the charges against him ; 
her own illness increasing with every day’s delay. It was a 
hard task for Laura to bear the anxiety ; to witness her dearest 
friend’s suffering ; worst of all, to support Helen’s estrange- 
ment, and the pain caused to her by that averted affection. 
But it was the custom of this young lady, to the utmost of her 
power, and by means of that gracious assistance which Heaven 
awarded to her pure and constant prayers, to do her duty. And 
as that duty was performed quite noiselessly, — while the sup- 
plications, which endowed her with the requisite strength for 
fulfilling it, also took place in her own chamber, away from all 
mortal sight, — we, too, must be perforce silent about these 
virtues of hers, which no more bear public talking about, than 
a flower will bear to bloom in a ballroom. This only we will 
say — that a good woman is the loveliest flower that blooms 
under heaven ; and that we look with love and wonder upon 
its silent grace, its pure fragrance, its delicate bloom of beauty. 


PENDENNIS. 


5 j 6 

Sweet and beautiful ! — the fairest and the most spotless ! — is it 
not a pity to see them bowed down or devoured by Grief or 
Death inexorable — wasting in disease — pining with long pain — • 
or cut off by sudden fate in their prime ? We may deserve grief — • 
but why should these be unhappy ? — except that we know that 
Heaven chastens those whom it loves best ; being pleased, by 
repeated trials, to make these pure spirits more pure. 

So Pen never got the letter, although it was duly posted and 
faithfully discharged by the postman into his letter-box in 
Lamb Court, and thence carried by the laundress to his writing- 
table with the rest of his lordship’s correspondence. 

Those kind readers who have watched Mr. Arthur’s career 
hitherto, and have made, as they naturally would do, observa- 
tions upon the n^oral character and peculiarities of their ac- 
quaintance, have probably discovered by this time what was the 
prevailing fault in Mr. Pen’s disposition, and who was that 
greatest enemy, artfully indicated in the title-page, with whom 
he had to contend. Not a few of us, my beloved public, have 
the very same rascal to contend with : a scoundrel who takes 
every opportunity of bringing us into mischief, of plunging us 
into quarrels, of leading us into idleness and unprofitable com- 
pany, and what not. In a word, Pen’s greatest enemy was him- 
self : and as he had been pampering, and coaxing, and indulg- 
ing that individual all his life, the rogue grew insolent, as all 
spoiled servants will be ; and at the slightest attempt to coerce 
him, or make him do that which was unpleasant to him, be- 
came frantically rude and unruly. A person who is used to 
making sacrifices — Laura, for instance, who had got such a 
habit of giving up her own pleasure, for others — can do the 
business quite easily ; but Pen, unaccustomed as he was to any 
sort of self-denial, suffered moodily when called on to pay his 
share, and savagely grumbled at being obliged to forego any- 
thing he liked. 

He had resolved in his mighty mind, then, that he would 
not see Fanny ; and he wouldn’t. He tried to drive the 
thoughts of that fascinating little person out of his head, by 
constant occupation, by exercise, by dissipation and society. 
He worked then too much ; he walked and rode too much ; he 
ate, drank, and smoked too much ; nor could all the cigars and 
the punch of which he partook drive little Fanny’s image out 
ot his inflamed brain ; and at the end of a week of this disci- 
pline and self-denial our young gentleman was in bed with a 
fever. Let the reader who has never had a fever in chambers 
pity the wretch who is bound to undergo that calamity. 


PENDENNIS. 


5*7 

A committee of marriageable ladies, or of any Christian 
persons interested in the propagation of the domestic virtues, 
should employ a Cruikshank or a Leech, or some other kindly 
expositor of the follies of the day, to make a series of Designs 
representing the horrors of a bachelor’s life in chambers, and 
leading the beholder to think of better things, and a more 
wholesome condition. What can be more uncomfortable than 
the bachelor’s lonely breakfast ? — with the black kettle in the 
dreary fire in Midsummer ; or, worse still, with the fire gone 
out at Christmas, half an hour after the laundress has quitted 
the sitting-room ? Into this solitude the owner enters shivering, 
and has to commence his day by hunting for coals and wood ; 
and before he begins the work of a student, has to discharge 
the duties of a housemaid, vice Mrs. Flanagan, who is absent 
without leave. Or, again, what can form a finer subject for the 
classical designer than the bachelor’s shirt — that garment 
which he wants to assume just at dinner-time, and which he 
finds without any buttons to fasten it ? Then there is the 
bachelor’s return to chambers, after a merry Christmas holiday, 
spent in a cozy country-house, full of pretty faces, and kind 
welcomes and regrets. He leaves his portmanteau at the Bar- 
ber’s in the Court : he lights his dismal old candle at the sput- 
tering little lamp on the stair : he enters the blank familiar 
room, where the only tokens to greet him, that show any interest 
in his personal welfare, are the Christmas bills, which are lying 
in wait for him, amiably spread out on his reading-table. Add 
to these scenes an -appalling picture of the bachelor’s illness, 
and the rents in the Temple will begin to fall from the day of 
the publication of the dismal diorama. To be well in chambers 
is melancholy, and lonely and selfish enough ; but to be ill in 
chambers — to pass nights of pain and watchfulness — to long 
for the morning and the laundress — to serve yourself your own 
medicine by your own watch — to have no other companion for 
long hours but your own ■sickenidg fancies and fevered thoughts ; 
no kind hand to give you drink if you are thirsty, or to smooth 
“the hot pillow that crumples under you, — this, indeed, is a fate 
so dismal and tragic, that we shall not enlarge upon its horrors ; 
and shall only heartily pity those bachelors in the- Temple who 
brave it every day. 

This lot befell Arthur Pendennis after the various excesses 
which we have mentioned, and to which he had subjected his 
unfortunate brains. One night he went to bed ill, and the 
next day awoke worse. His only visitor that day besides the 
laundress, was the Printer’s Devil, from the “ Pall Mall Gazette ” 


PENDENN1S. 


Sl8 

office, whom the writer endeavored, as best he could, to satisfy. 
His exertions to complete his work rendered his fever the 
greater : he could only furnish a part of the quantity of “ copy ” 
usually supplied by him; and Shandon being absent, and 
Warrington not in London to give a help, the political and 
editorial columns of the “ Gazette ” looked very blank indeed; 
the sub-editor knew how to fill them. 

Mr. Finucane rushed up to Pen’s chambers, and found that 
gentleman so exceedingly unwell, that the good-natured Irish- 
man set to work to supply his place, if possible, and produced 
a series of political and critical compositions, such as no doubt 
greatly edified the readers of the periodical in which he and 
Pen were concerned. Allusions to the greatness of Ireland 
and the genius and virtue of the inhabitants of that injured 
country, flowed magnificently from Finucane’s pen ; and Shan- 
don, the Chief of the paper, who was enjoying himself plac- 
idly at Boulogne-sur-Mer, looking over the columns of the 
journal, which was forwarded to him, instantly recognized 
the hand of the great Sub-editor, and said, laughing, as he 
flung over the paper to his wife, “Look here, Mary, my dear, 
here is Jack at work again.” Indeed, Jack was a warm 
friend and a gallant partisan, and when he had the pen 
in hand, seldem let slip an opportunity of letting the 
world know that Rafferty was the greatest painter in Europe, 
and wondering at the petty jealousy of the Academy, which re- 
fused to make him an R. A. : of stating that it was generally 
reported at the West End, that Mr. Rooney, M. P., was ap- 
pointed Governor of Barataria : or of introducing into the sub- 
ject in hand, whatever it might be, a compliment to the Round 
Towers, or the Giant’s Causeway. And besides doing Pen’s 
work for him, to the best of his ability, his kind-hearted com- 
rade offered to forego his Saturday’s and Sunday’s holiday, and 
pass those days of holiday and rest as nurse-tender to Arthur, 
who, however, insisted that the other should not forego his 
pleasure, and thankfully assured him that he could bear best 
his malady alone. 

Taking his supper at the Back Kitchen on the Friday night, 
after having achieved the work of the paper, Finucane informed 
Captain Costigan of the illness of their young friend in the 
Temple ; and remembering the fact two days afterwards, the 
Captain went to Lamb Court and paid a visit to the invalid on 
Sunday afternoon. He found Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, in 
tears in the sitting-room, and got a bad report of the poor dear 
young gentleman within. Pen’s condition had so much alarmed 


PENDENNIS. 


5 X 9 

her, that she was obliged to have recourse to the stimulus of 
brandy to enable her to support the grief which his illness oc* 
casioned. As she hung about his bed, and endeavored to 
minister to him, her attentions became intolerable to the invalid, 
and he begged her peevishly not to come near him. Hence the 
laundress’s tears and redoubled grief, and renewed application 
to the bottle, which she was accustomed to use as an anodyne. 
The Captain rated the woman soundly for her intemperance, 
and pointed out to her the fatal consequences which must en- 
sue if she persisted in her imprudent courses. 

Pen, who was by this time in a very fevered state, was yet 
greatly pleased to receive Costigan’s visit. He heard the well- 
known voice in his sitting-room, as he lay in the bedroom with- 
in, and called the Captain eagerly to him, and thanked him for 
coming, and begged him to take a chair and talk to him. The 
Captain felt the young man’s pulse, with great gravity — (his 
own tremulous and clammy hand growing steady for the instant 
while his finger pressed Arthur’s throbbing vein) — the pulse 
was beating very fiercely — Pen’s face was haggard and hot — 
his eyes were bloodshot and gloomy ; his “ bird,” as the Captain 
pronounced the word, afterwards giving a description of his 
condition, had not been shaved for nearly a week. Pen made 
his visitor sit down, and, tossing and turning i*n his comfortless 
bed, began to try and talk to the Captain in a lively manner 
about the Back Kitchen, about Vauxhall, and when they should 
go again, and about Fanny — how was little Fanny? 

Indeed how was she ? We know how she went home very 
sadly on the previous Sunday evening, after she had seen 
Arthur light his lamp in his chambers, whilst he was having his 
interview with Bows. Bows came back to his own rooms 
presently, passing by the Lodge door, and looking into Mrs. 
Bolton’s, according to his word, as he passed, but with a very 
melancholy face. She had another weary night that night. Her 
restlessness wakened her little bedfellows more than once. She 
daren’t read more of “ Walter Lorraine : ” Father was at home 
and would suffer no light. She kept the book under her pillow, 
and felt for it in the night. She had only just got to sleep, 
when the children began to stir with the morning, almost as 
early as the birds. Though she was very angry with Bows, she 
went to his room at her accustomed hour in the day, and there 
the good-hearted musician began to talk to her. 

“ I saw Mr. Pendennis last night, Fanny,” he said. 

“ Did you ? I thought you did,” Fanny answered, looking 
fiercely at the melancholy old gentleman. 


520 


PENDENMS . 


“ I’ve been fond of you ever since we came to live in this 
place,” he continued. “ You were a child when I came ; and 
you used to like me, Fanny, until three or four days ago : until 
you saw this gentleman.” 

“ And now, I suppose, you are going to say ill of him,” 
said Fanny. “ Do, Mr. Bows — that will make me like you 
better.” 

“ Indeed I shall do no such thing,” Bows answered ; “ I 
think he is a very good and honest young man.” 

“ Indeed ! you know that if you said a word against him, } 
would never speak a word to you again — never ! ” cried Mis» 
Fanny; and clenched her little hand, and paced up and down 
the room. Bows noted, watched, and followed the ardent little 
creature with admiration and gloomy sympathy. Her cheeks 
flushed, her frame trembled ; her eyes beamed love, anger, de- 
fiance. “You would like to speak ill of him,” she said ; “but 
you daren’t — you know you daren’t ! ” 

“ I knew him many years since,” Bows continued ; “ when 
he was almost as young as you are, and he had a romantic 
attachment for our friend the Captain’s daughter — Lady Mira- 
bel that is now.” 

Fanny laughed. “ I suppose there was other people, too, 
that had romantic attachments for Miss Costigan,” she said : “ 1 
don’t want to hear about ’em.” 

“ He wanted to marry her ; but their ages were quite dispro- 
portionate : and their rank in life. She would not have him 
because he had no money. She acted very wisely in refusing 
him ; for the two would have been very unhappy, and she wasn’t 
a fit person to go and live with his family, or to make his home 
comfortable. Mr. Pendennis has his way to make in the world, 
and must marry a lady of his own rank. A woman who loves a 
man will not ruin his prospects, cause him to quarrel with his 
family, and lead him into poverty and misery for her gratifica- 
tion. An honest girl won’t do that, for her own sake, or for the 
man’s.” 

Fanny’s emotion, which but now had been that of defiance 
and anger, here turned to dismay and supplication. “What do 
I know about marrying, Bows ? ” she said. “ When was there 
any talk of it ? What has there been between this young 
gentleman and me that’s to make people speak so cruel ? It 
was not my doing ; nor Arthur’s — Mr. Pendennis’s — that I met 
him at Vauxhall. It was the Captain took me and ma there. 
We never thought of nothing wrong, I’m sure. He came and 
rescued us, and was so very kind. Then he came to call and 


PENDENN1S. 


5 21 

ask after us : and very, very good it was of such a grand gentle- 
man to be so polite to humble folks like us ! And yesterday 
ma and me just went to walk in the Temple Gardens, and — • 
and ” — here she broke out with that usual, unanswerable, female 
argument of tears — and cried, “ Oh ! I wish I was dead ! I wish 
I was laid in my grave ; and had never, never seen him ! ” 

“ He said as much himself, Fanny,” Bows said; and Fanny 
asked, through her sobs, Why, why should he wish he had never 
seen her ? Had she ever done him any harm ? Oh, she would 
perish rather than do him any harm. Whereupon the musician 
informed her of the conversation of the day previous, showed 
her that Pen could not and must not think of her as a wife 
fitting for him, and that she, as she valued her honest reputa- 
tion, must strive too to forget him. And Fanny, leaving the 
musician, convinced but still of the same mind, and promising 
that she would avoid the danger which menaced her, went back 
to the Porter’s Lodge and told her mother all. She talked of 
her love for Arthur, and bewailed, in her artless manner, the 
inequality of their condition, that set barriers between them. 
“ There’s the Lady of Lyons,” Fanny said. “Oh, ma ! how I 
did love Mr. Macready when I saw him do it ; and Pauline, for 
being faithful to poor Claude, and always thinking of him ; and 
he coming back to her, an officer, through all his dangers 1 
And if everybody admires Pauline — and Pm sure everybody 
does, for being so true to a poor man — why should a gentleman 
be ashamed of loving a poor girl ? Not that Mr. Arthur loves 
me — Oh, no, no ! I ain’t worthy of him ; only a princess is 
worthy of such a gentleman as him. Such a poet !— writing so 
beautifully and looking so grand ! I’m sure he’s a nobleman, 
and of ancient family, and kept out of his estate. Perhaps his 
uncle has it. Ah, if I might, oh, how I’d serve him, and work 
for him, and slave for him, that I would. I wouldn’t ask for 
more than that, ma, — just to be allowed to see him of a morn- 
ing ; and sometimes he’d say * How d’you do, Fanny ? ’ or, 
‘God bless you, Fanny!’ as he said on Sunday. And I’d 
work, and work ; and I’d sit up all night, and read, and learn, 
and make myself worthy of him. The Captain says his mother 
lives in the country, and is a grand lady there. Oh, how I wish 
I might go and be her servant, ma ! I can do plenty of things ; 
and work very neat ; and — and sometimes he’d come home, and 
I should see him ! ” 

The girl’s head fell on her mother’s shoulder as she spoke, 
and she gave way to a plentiful outpouring of girlish tears, to 
which the matron, of course, joined her own. “ You mustn’t 


PENDENNIS . 


5 22 

think no more of him, Fanny,” she said. “If he don't come to 
you, he’s a horrid, wicked man.” 

“ Don’t call him so, mother,” Fanny replied. “ He’s the 
best of men, the best and the kindest. Bows says he thinks he 
is unhappy at leaving poor little Fanny. It wasn’t his fault, 
was it, that we met ? — and it ain’t his that I musn’t see him 
again. He says I mustn’t — and I mustn’t, mother. He’ll for- 
get me, but I shall never forget him. No ! I’ll pray for him, 
and love him always — until I die — and I shall die, I know I 
shall — and then my spirit will always go and be with him.” 

“ You forget your poor mother, Fanny, and you’ll break my 
heart by goin’ on so,” Mrs. Bolton said. “ Perhaps you will 
see him. I’m sure you’ll see him. I’m sure he’ll come to-day. 
If ever I saw a man in love, that man is him. When Emily 
Budd’s young man first came about her, he was sent away by 
old Budd, a most respectable man, and violoncello in the or- 
chestra at the Wells ; and his own fam’ly wouldn’t hear of it 
neither. But he came back. We all knew he would. Emily 
always said so ; and he married her ; and this one .will come 
back too ; and you mark a mother’s words, and see if he don’t, 
dear.” 

At this point of the conversation Mr. Bolton entered the 
Lodge for his evening meal. At the father’s appearance, the 
talk between mother and daughter ceased instantly. Mrs. Bol- 
ton caressed and cajoled the surly undertaker’s aide-de-camp, 
and said, “ Lor, Mr. B., who’d have thought to see you away 
from the Club of a Saturday night ! Fanny, dear, get your pa 
some supper. What will you have, B. ? The poor gurl’s got a 
gathering in her eye, or somethink in it — I was lookin’ at it 
just now as you came in. And she squeezed her daughter’s 
hand as a signal of prudence and secrecy ; and Fanny’s tears 
were dried up likewise ; and by that wondrous hypocrisy and 
power of disguise which women practice, and with which weap- 
ons of defence nature endows them, the traces of her emotion 
disappeared ; and she went and took her work, and sat in the 
corner so demure and quiet, that the careless male parent never 
suspected that anything ailed her. 

Thus, as if fate seemed determined to inflame and increase 
the poor child’s malady and passion, all circumstances and all 
parties round about her urged it on. Her mother encouraged 
and applauded it ; and the very words which Bows used in en- 
deavoring to repress her flame only augmented this unlucky 
fever. Pen was not wicked and a seducer : Pen was high- 
minded. in wishing to avoid her. Pen loved her : the good and 


PENDENNIS. 


5 2 3 

the great, the magnificent youth, with the chains of gold and 
the scented auburn hair ! And so he did : or so he would have 
loved her five years back perhaps, before the world had hard- 
ened the ardent and reckless boy — before he was ashamed of a 
foolish and imprudent passion, and strangled it as poor women 
do their illicit children, not on account of their crime, but of 
the shame, and from dread that the finger of the world should 
point to them. 

What respectable person in the world will not say he was 
quite right to avoid a marriage with an ill-educated person of 
low degree, whose relations a gentleman could not well ac- 
knowledge, and whose manners would not become her 'new 
station ? — and what philosopher would not tell him that the 
best thing to do with 'these little passions if they spring up, is 
to get rid of them, and let them pass over and cure them : 
that no man dies about a woman, or vice versa : and that 
one or the other having found the impossibility of gratifying 
his or her desire in the particular instance, must make the 
best of matters, forget each other, look out elsewhere, and 
choose again? And yet, perhaps, there may be something 
said on the other side. Perhaps Bows was right in admiring 
that passion of Pen’s, blind and unreasoning as it was, that 
made him ready to stake his all for his love ; perhaps, if self- 
sacrifice is a laudable virtue, mere worldly self-sacrifice is not 
very much to be praised ; — in fine, let this be a reserved point, 
to be settled by the individual moralist who chooses to debate 
it. 

So much is certain, that with the experience of the world 
which Mr. Pen now had, he would have laughed at and scouted 
the idea of marrying a penniless girl out of the kitchen. And 
this point being fixed in his mind, he was but doing his duty, 
as an honest man, in crushing an unlucky fondness which he 
might feel towards poor little Fanny. 

So she waited and waited in hopes that Arthur would come. 
She waited for a whole week, and it was at the end of that time 
that the poor little creature heard from Costigan of the illness 
under which Arthur was suffering. 

It chanced on that very evening after Costigan had visited 
Pen, that Arthur’s uncle the excellent Major arrived in town 
from Buxton, where his health had been mended, and sent his 
valet Morgan to make inquiries for Arthur, and to request that 
gentleman to breakfast with the Major the next morning. The 
Major was merely passing through London on his way to the 


PENDENNIS. 


524 

Marquis of Steyne’s house of Stillbrook, where he was engaged 
to shoot partridges. 

Morgan came back to his master with a very long face. 
He had seen Mr. Arthur ; Mr. Arthur was very bad indeed ; 
Mr. Arthur was in bed with a fever. A doctor ought to be 
sent to him ; and Morgan thought his case most alarming. 

Gracious goodness ! this was sad news indeed. He had 
hoped that Arthur could come down to Stillbrook : he had 
arranged that he should go, and procured an invitation for his 
nephew from Lord Steyne. He must go himself ; he couldn’t 
throw Lord Steyne over : the fever might be catching : it might 
be measles ; he had never himself had the measles ; they were 
dangerous when contracted at his age. Was anybody with 
Mr. Arthur? 

Morgan said there was somebody a nussing of Mr. Arthur. 

The Major then asked, had his nephew taken any advice ? 
Morgan said he had asked that question, and had been told 
that Mr. Pendennis had had no doctor. 

Morgan’s master was sincerely vexed at hearing of Arthur’s 
calamity. He would have gone to him, but what good could it 
do Arthur that he the Major should catch a fever? His own 
ailments rendered it absolutely impossible that he should attend 
to anybody but himself. But the young man must have advice 
— the best advice ; and Morgan was straightway despatched 
with a note from Major Pendennis to his friend Doctor Good- 
enough, who by good luck happened to be in London and at 
home, and who quitted his dinner instantly, and whose car- 
riage was, in half an hour, in Upper Temple Lane, near Pen’s 
chambers. # 

The Major had asked the kind-hearted physician to bring 
him news of his nephew at the Club where he himself was 
dining, and in the course of the night the Doctor made his 
appearance. The affair was very serious : the patient was in a 
high fever : he had had Pen bled instantly : and would see 
him the first thing in the morning. The Major went discon- 
solate to bed with this unfortunate news. When Goodenough 
came to see him according to his promise the next day, the 
Doctor had to listen for a quarter of an hour to an account of 
the Major’s own maladies, before the latter had leisure to hear 
about Arthur. 

He had had a very bad night — his — his nurse said : at one 
hour he had been delirious. It might end badly : his mother 
had better be sent for immediately. The Major wrote the 
letter to Mrs. Pendennis with the greatest alacrity, and at the 


PENDENNIS , 


5 2 S 

same time with the most polite precautions. As for going him- 
self to the lad, in his state it was impossible. “ Could I be of 
any use to him, my dear Doctor ? ” he asked. 

# The Doctor, with a peculiar laugh, said, No : he didn’t 
think the Major could be of any use : that his own precious 
health required the most delicate treatment, and that he had 
best go into the country and stay : that he himself would take 
care to see the patient twice a day, and do all in his power for 
him. 

The Major declared, upon his honor, that if he could be of 
any use he would rush to Pen’s chambers. As it was, Morgan 
should go and see that everything was right. The Doctor 
must write to him by every post to Stillbrook : it was but forty 
miles distant from London, and if anything happened he would 
come up at any sacrifice. 

Major Pendennis transacted his benevolence by deputy and 
by post. “ What else could he do? ” as he said. “ Gad, you 
know, in these cases, it’s best not disturbing a fellow. If a 
poor fellow goes to the bad, why, Gad, you know he’s disposed 
of. But in order to get well (and in this, my dear Doctor, I’m 
sure that you will agree with me), the best way is to keep him 
quiet — perfectly quiet.” 

Thus it was the old gentleman tried to satisfy his conscience : 
and he went his way that day to Stillbrook by railway (for rail- 
ways have sprung up in the course of this narrative, though 
they have not quite penetrated into Pen’s country yet), and 
made his appearance in his usual trim order and curly wig, at 
the dinner-table of the Marquis of Stevne. But we must do the 
Major the justice to say, that he was very unhappy and gloomy 
in demeanor. Wagg and Wenham rallied him about his low 
spirits ; asked whether he was crossed in love ? and otherwise 
diverted themselves at his expense. Pie lost his money at 
whist after dinner, and actually trumped his partner’s highest 
spade. And the thoughts of the suffering boy, of whom he was 
proud, and whom he loved after his manner, kept the old fel- 
low awake half through the night, and made him feverish and 
uneasy. 

On the morrow he received a note in a handwriting which 
he did not know : it was that of Mr. Bows, indeed, saying that 
Mr. Arthur Pendennis had had a tolerable night ; and that as 
Dr. Goodenough had stated that the Major desired to be in- 
formed of his nephew’s health, he, R. B., had sent him the news 
per rail. 

The next day he was going out shooting, about noon, with 


PENDENNIS. 


526 

some of the gentlemen staying at Lord Steyne’s house ; 
and the company, waiting for the carriages, were assembled on 
the terrace in front of the house when a fly drove up from 
the neighboring station, and a gray-headed, rather shabby old 
gentleman, jumped out, and asked for Major Pendennis. 
It was Mr. Bows. He took the Major aside and spoke to him ; 
most of the gentlemen round about saw that something serious 
had happened, from the alarmed look of the Major’s face. 

Wagg said, “ It’s a bailiff come down to nab the Major ; ” 
but nobody laughed at the pleasantry. 

“ Hullo ! What’s the matter, Pendennis ? ” cried Lord 
Steyne, with his strident voice. “ Anything wrong ? ” 

“ It’s — it’s — my boy that’s dead,'' said the Major, and burst 
into a sob — the old man was quite overcome. 

“ Not dead, my Lord ; but very ill when I left London,” 
Mr. Bows said, in a low voice. 

A britzka came up at this moment as the three men were 
speaking. The Peer looked at his watch. “You’ve twenty 
minutes to catch the mail-train. Jump in, Pendennis; and 
drive like h — , sir, do you hear? ” 

The carriage drove off swiftly with Pendennis and his com- 
panions, and let us trust that the oath will be pardoned to the 
Marquis of Steyne. 

The Major drove rapidly from the station to the Temple, 
and found a travelling-carriage already before him, and block- 
ing up the narrow Temple Lane. Two ladies got out of it, and 
were asking their way of the porters ; the Major looked by 
chance at + he panel of the carriage, and saw the worn-out crest 
of the Eagle looking at the Sun, and the motto, “ Nec tenui 
penna,” painted beneath. It was his brother’s old carriage, 
built many, many years ago. It was Helen and Laura that 
were asking their way to poor Pen’s room. 

He ran up to them ; hastily clasped his sister’s arm and 
kissed her hand ; and the three entered into Lamb Court, and 
mounted the long gloomy stair. 

They knocked very gently at the door, on which Arthur’s 
name was written, and it was opened by Fanny Bolton. 


FEND ENNIS. 


5*7 


CHAPTER LII. 

A CRITICAL CHAPTER. 

As Fanny saw the two ladies and the anxious countenance 
of the elder, who regarded her with a look of inscrutable alarm 
and terror, the poor girl at once knew that Pen’s mother was 
before her ; there was a resemblance between the widow’s 
haggard eyes and Arthur’s as he tossed in his bed in fever. 
Fanny looked wistfully at Mrs. Pendennis and at Laura after- 
wards ; there was no more expression in the latter’s face than 
if it had been a mass of stone. Hard-heartedness and gloom 
dwelt on the figures of both the new-comers ; neither showed 
any the faintest gleam of mercy or sympathy for Fanny. She 
looked desperately from them to the Major behind them. Old 
Pendennis dropped his eyelids, looking up ever so stealthily 
from under them at Arthur’s poor little nurse.- 

“ I — I wrote to you yesterday, if you please, ma’am,” Fanny 
said, trembling in every limb as she spoke ; and as pale as 
Laura, whose sad menacing face looked over Mrs. Pendennis’s 
shoulder. 

“ Did you, madam ? ” Mrs. Pendennis said. “ I suppose I 
may now relieve you from nursing my son. I am his mother, 
you understand.” 

“ Yes, ma’am. I — this is the way to his — Oh, wait a 

minute,” cried out Fanny. “ I must piepare you for his ” 

The widow, whose face had been hopelessly cruel and ruth- 
less, here started back with a gasp and a little cry, which she 
speedily stifled. 

“ He’s been so since yesterday,” Fanny said, trembling very 
much, and with chattering teeth. 

A horrid shriek of laughter came out of Pen’s room, whereof 
the door was open ; and, after several shouts, the wretch began 
to sing a college drinking-song, and <then to hurray and shout 
as if he was in the midst of a wine-party, and to thumo with 
his fist against the wainscot. He was quite delirious. 

“ He does not know me, ma’am,” Fanny said. 

“ Indeed. Perhaps he will know his mother ; let me pass, 
if you please, and go in to him.” And the widow hastily pushed 
by little Fanny, and through the dark passage which led into 


PENDENNIS . 


5 2 8 

Pen’s sitting-room. Laura sailed by Fanny, too, without a word ; 
and Major Pendennis followed them. Fanny sat down on a 
bench in the passage, and cried, and prayed as well as she could. 
She would have died for him ; and they hated her ! They 
had not a word of thanks or kindness for her, the fine ladies. 
She sat there in the passage, she did not know how long. 
They never came out to speak to her. She sat there until 
Doctor Goodenough came to pay his second visit that day ; he 
found the poor little thing at the door. 

“ What, nurse ? How’s your patient ? ” asked the good- 
natured Doctor. “ Has he had any rest ? ” 

“Go and ask them. They’re inside,” Fanny answered. 

“ Who ? his mother ? ” 

Fanny nodded her head and didn’t speak. 

“ You must go to bed yourself, my poor little maid,” said the 
Doctor. “You will be ill, too, if you don’t.” 

“ Oh, mayn’t I come and see him : mayn’t I come and see 
him ! L — I — love him so,” the little girl said ; and as she spoke 
she fell down on her knees and clasped hold of the Doctor’s 
hand in such an agony that to see her melted the kind physi- 
cian’s heart, and caused a mist to come over his spectacles. 

“ Pooh, pooh ! Nonsense ! Nurse, has he taken his 
draught ? Has he had any rest ? Of course you must come 
and see him. So must I.” 

“They’ll let me sit here, won’t they, sir? I’ll never make 
no noise. I only ask to stop here,” Fanny said. On which the 
Doctor called her a stupid little thing ; put her down upon the 
bench where Pen’s printer’s devil used to sit so many hours ; 
tapped her pale cheek with his finger, and bustled into the 
further room. 

Mrs. Pendennis was ensconced pale and solemn in a great 
chair by Pen’s bedside. Her watch was on the bed-table by 
Pen’s medicines. Her bonnet and cloaks were laid in the win- 
dow. She had her Bible in her lap, without which she never 
travelled. Her first movement, after seeing her son, had been 
to take Fanny’s shawl and bonnet which were on his drawers, 
and bring them out and drop them down upon his study-table. 
She had closed the door upon Major Pendennis, and Laura too ; 
and taken possession of her son. 

She had had a great doubt and terror lest Arthur should not 
know her ; but that pang was spared to her, in part at least. 
Pen knew his mother quite well, and familiarly smiled and 
nodded at hen When she came in, he instantly fancied that 
they were at home at Fairoaks ; and began to talk and chatter 


PElVDENiVlS. 


5 2 9 

and laugh in a rambling wild way. Laura could hear him out* 
1 side. His laughter shot shafts of poison into her heart. It was 
true then. He had been guilty — and with that creature ! — an 
intrigue with a servant-maid; and she had loved him — and he 
was dying most likely — raving and unrepentant. The Major 
now and then hummed out a word of remark or consolation, 
which Laura scarce heard. A dismal sitting it was for all 
parties ; and when Goodenough appeared, he came like an 
; angel into the room. 

It is not only for the sick man, it is for the sick man’s 
friends that the Doctor comes. His presence is often as good 
for them as for the patient, and they long for him yet more 
eagerly. How we have all watched after him ! what an emotion 
the thrill of his carriage-wheels in the street, and at length at 
the door, has made us feel ! how we hang upon his words, and 
what a comfort we get from a smile or two, if he can vouch- 
safe that sunshine to lighten our darkness ! Who hasn’t seen 
the mother prying into his face, to know if there is hope for 
the sick infant that cannot speak, and that lies yonder, its little 
frame battling with fever ? Ah, how she looks into his eyes ! 
What thanks if there is light there ; what grief and jDain if he 
casts them down, and dares not say “ hope ! ” Or it is the 
house-father who is stricken. The terrified wife looks on, while 
the physician feels his patient’s wrist, smothering her agonies, 
as the children have been called upon to stay their plays and 
their talk. Over the patient in the fever, the wife expectant, 
the children unconscious, the Doctor stands as if he were Fate, 
the dispenser of life and death : he must let the patient off this 
time ; the woman prays so for his respite ! One can fancy how 
awful the responsibility must be to a conscientious man : how 
cruel the feeling that he has given the wrong remedy, or that it 
might have been possible to do better : how harassing the sym- 
pathy with survivors, if the case is unfortunate — how immense 
the delight of victory ! 

Having passed through a hasty ceremony of introduction to 
the new-comers, of whose arrival he had been made aware by 
the heart-broken little nurse in waiting without, the Doctor pro- 
ceeded to examine the patient, about whose condition of high 
fever there could be no mistake, and on whom he thought it 
necessary to exercise the strongest antiphlogistic remedies in 
his power. He consoled the unfortunate mother as best he 
might ; and giving her the most comfortable assurances on 
which he could venture, that there was no reason to despair 
yet, that everything might still be hoped from his youth, the 

34 


PENDENNIS. 


530 

strength of his constitution, and so forth ; and havir.g done his 
utmost to allay the horrors of the alarmed matron, he took the 
elder Pendennis aside into the vacant room (Warrington’s bed- 
room), for the purpose of holding a little consultation. 

The case was very critical. The fever, if not stopped, might 
and would carry off the young fellow : he must be bled forth- 
with : the mother must be informed of this necessity. Why 
was that other young lady brought with her ? She was out of 
place in a sick room. 

“ And there was another woman still, be hanged to it ! ” the 
Major said, “ the — the little person who opened the door. His 
sister-in-law had brought the poor little devil’s bonnet and shawl 
out, and flung them upon the study-table. Did Goodenough 
know anything about the — the little person ? I just caught a 
glimpse of her as we passed in,” the Major said, “ and begad 
she was uncommonly nice-looking.” The Doctor looked queer : 
the Doctor smiled — in the very gravest moments, with life and 
death pending, such strange contrasts and occasions of humor 
will arise, and such smiles will pass, to satirize the gloom, as it 
were, and to make it more gloomy ! 

“ I have it,” at last he said, re-entering the study ; and he 
wrote a couple of notes hastily at the table there, and sealed one 
of them. Then, taking up poor Fanny’s shawl and bonnet, and 
the notes, he went out in the passage to that poor little mes- 
senger, and said, “ Quick, nurse ; you must carry this to the 
surgeon, and bid him come instantly : and then go to my house, 
and ask for my servant, Harbottle, and tell him to get this pre- 
scription prepared ; and wait until I — until it is ready. It may 
take a little time in preparation.” 

So poor Fanny trudged away with her two notes, and found 
the apothecary, who lived in the Strand hard by, and who 
came straightway, his lancet in his pocket, to operate on his 
patient ; and then Fanny made for the Doctor’s house, in 
Hanover Square. 

The Doctor was at home again before the prescription was 
made up, which took Harbottle, his servant, such a long time 
in compounding ; and, during the remainder of Arthur’s ill- 
ness, poor Fanny never made her appearance in the quality of 
nurse at his chambers any more. But for that day and the 
next, a little figure might be seen lurking about Pen’s stair- 
case, — a sad, sad little face looked at and interrogated the 
apothecary, and the apothecary’s boy, and the laundress, and 
the kind physician himself, as they passed out of the cham- 
bers of the sick man. And on the third day, the kind Doctor’s 


PENDENNIS . 


531 

chariot stopped at Shepherd’s Inn, and the good, and honest, and 
benevolent man went into the Porter’s Lodge, and tended a 
little patient he had there, for whom the best remedy he found 
was on the day when he was enabled to tell Fanny Bolton that 
the crisis was over, and that there was at length every hope for 
Arthur Pendennis. 

J. Costigan, Esquire, late of her Majesty’s service, saw the 
Doctor’s carriage, and criticised its horses and appointments. 
“ Green liveries, bedad ! ” the General said, “ and as foin a 
pair of high-stepping bee horses as ever a gentleman need sit 
behoind, let alone a docthor. There’s no ind to the proide and 
ar’gance of them docthors, now-a-days — not but that, is a good 
one, and a scoientific cyrakter, and a roight good fellow, bedad , 
and he’s brought the poor little girl well troo her faver, Bows, 
me boy ; ” and so pleased was Mr. Costigan with the Doctor’s 
behavior and skill, that, whenever he met Dr. Goodenough’s 
carriage in future, he made a point of saluting it and the phy- 
sician inside, in as courteous and magnificent a manner, as if 
Dr. Goodenough had been the Lord Liftenant himself, and Cap- 
tain Costigan had been in his glory in Phaynix Park. 

The widow’s gratitude to the physician knew no bounds — • 
or scarcely any bounds, at least. The kind gentleman laughed 
at the idea of taking a fee from a literary man, or the widow of 
a brother practitioner, and she determined when she got back 
to Fairoaks that she would send Goodenough the silver-gilt vase, 
the jewel of the house, and the glory of the late John Pendennis, 
preserved in green baize, and presented to him at Bath, by the 
Lady Elizabeth Firebrace, on the recovery of her son, the late 
Sir Anthony Firebrace, from the scarlet fever. Hippocrates, 
Hygeia, King Bladud, and a wreath of serpents surmount the 
the cup to this day ; which was executed in their finest manner, 
by Messrs. Abednego, of Milsom Street ; and the inscription 
was by Mr. Birch, tutor to the young baronet. 

This priceless gem of art the widow determined to devote to 
Goodenough, the preserver of her son ; and there was scarcely 
any other favor which her gratitude would not have conferred 
upon him, except one, which he desired most, and which was 
that she should think a little charitably and kindly of poor 
Fanny, of whose artless, sad story, he had got something during 
his interviews with her, and of whom he was induced to think 
very kindly, — not being disposed, indeed, to give much credit 
to Pen for his conduct in the affair, or not knowing what that 
conduct had been. He knew enough, however, to be aware 
that the poor infatuated little girl was without stain as yet ; that 


PENDENNIS. 


S3 2 

while she had been in Pen’s room it was to see the last of him, 
as she thought, and that Arthur was scarcely aware of her pres- 
ence ; and that she suffered under the deepest and most 
pitiful grief, at the idea of losing him, dead or living. 

But on the one or two occasions when Goodenough alluded 
to Fanny, the widow’s countenance, always soft and gentle, as- 
sumed an expression so cruel and inexorable, that the Doctor 
saw it was in vain to ask her for justice or pity, and he broke 
off all entreaties, and ceased making any further allusions 
regarding his little client. There is a complaint which neither 
poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy syrups of the East 
could allay, in the men in his time, as we are informed by a 
popular poet of the days of Elizabeth ; and which, when exhibited 
in women, no medical discoveries or practice subsequent — 
neither homoeopathy, nor hydropathy, nor mesmerism, nor Dr. 
Simpson, nor Dr. Locock can cure, and that is — we won’t call 
it jealousy, but lather gently denominate it rivalry and emula- 
tion in ladies. 

Some of those mischievous and prosaic people who carp and 
-calculate at every detail of the romancer, and want to know, for 
instance, how, when the characters in the “ Critic ” are at a 
dead lock with their daggers at each other’s throats, they are to 
be got out of that murderous complication of circumstances, 
may be induced to ask how it was possible in a set of chambers 
in the Temple, consisting of three rooms, two cupboards, a pas- 
sage, and a coal-box, Arthur a sick gentleman, Helen his 
mother, Laura her adopted daughter, Martha their country at- 
tendant, Mrs. Wheezer a nurse from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, 
Mrs. Flanagan an Irish Laundress, Major Pendennis a retired 
military officer, Morgan his valet, Pidgeon Mr. Arthur Pen- 
dennis’s boy, and others could be accommodated — the answer 
is given at once, that almost everybody in the Temple was out 
of town, and that there was scarcely a single occupant of Pen’s 
house in Lamb Court except those who were engaged round the 
sick-bed of the sick gentleman, about whose fever we have not 
given a lengthy account, neither shall we enlarge very much 
upon the more cheerful theme of his recovery. 

Everybody we have said was out of town, and of course such 
a fashionable man as young Mr. Sibwright, who had chambers 
on the second floor in Pen’s staircase, could not be supposed 
to remain in London. Mrs. Flanagan, Mr. Pendennis’s laun- 
dress, was acquainted with Mrs. Rouncy who did for Mr. Sib- 
wright, and that gentleman’s bedroom was got ready for Miss 
Bell, or Mrs. Pendennis, when the latter should be inclined to 


PENDENNIS. 


533 

leave her son’s sick-room, to try and seek for a little rest for 
herself. 

If that young buck and flower of Baker Street, Percy Sib- 
wright, could have known who was the occupant of his bedroom, 
how proud he would have been of that apartment ! — what poems 
he would have written about Laura ! (several of his things have 
appeared in the annuals, and in manuscript in the. nobility’s 
albums) — he was a Camford man and very nearly got the Eng- 
lish Prize Poem, it was said — Sibwright, however, was absent 
and his bed given up to Miss Bell. It was the prettiest little 
brass bed in the world, with chintz curtains lined with pink — he 
had a mignonette box in his bed-room window, and the mere 
sight of his little exhibition of shiny boots, arranged in trim 
rows over his wardrobe, was a gratification to the beholder, 
he had a museum of scent, pomatum, and bears ’-grease pots, 
quite curious to examine, too ; and a choice selection of por- 
traits of females almost always in sadness and generally in dis- 
guise or deshabille, glittered round the neat walls of his elegant 
little bower of repose. Medora with dishevelled hair was con- 
soling herself over her banjo for the absence of her Conrad — 
the Princesse Fleur de Marie (of Rudolstein and the Mysteres 
de Paris) was sadly ogling out of the bars of her convent cage, 
in which, poor prisoned bird, she was moulting away — Dorothea 
of Don Quixote was washing her eternal feet : — in fine, it was 
such an elegant gallery as became a gallant lover of the sex. 
And in Sibwright’s sitting-room, while there was quite an infan- . 
tine law library clad in skins of fresh new-born calf, there was 
a tolerably large collection of classical books which he could 
not read, and of English and French works of poetry and fic- 
tion which he read a great deal too much. His invitation cards 
of the past season still decorated his looking-glass : and scarce 
anything told of the lawyer but the wig-box beside the Venus 
upon the middle-shelf or the bookcase, on which the name of 
P. Sibwright, Esquire, was gilded. 

With Sibwright in chambers was Mr. Bangham. Mr. Bang- 
ham was a sporting man, married to a rich widow. Mr. 
Bangham had no practice — did not come to chambers thrice in 
a term : went a circuit for those mysterious reasons which make 
men go circuit, — and his room served as a great convenience to 
Sibwright when that young gentleman gave his little dinners. 
It must be confessed that these two gentlemen have nothing to 
do with our history, will never appear in it again probably, but 
we cannot help glancing through their doors as they happen to 
be open to us, and as we pass to Pen’s rooms ; as in the pur- 


PENDENNIS. 


534 

suit of our own business in life through the Strand, at the Club, 
nay at Church itself, we cannot help peeping at the shops on 
the way, or at our neighbor’s dinner, or at the faces under the 
bonnets in the next pew. 

Very many years after the circumstances about which we 
are at present occupied, Laura, with a blush and a laugh show- 
ing much* humor, owned to having read a French novel once 
much in vogue, and when her husband asked her, wondering 
where on earth she could have got such a volume, she owned 
that it was in the Temple, when she lived in Mr. Percy Sib* 
wright’s chambers. 

“ And, also, I never confessed,” she said, “ on that same 
occasion, what I must now own to : that I opened the japanned 
box, and took out that strange-looking wig inside it, and put it 
on and looked at myself in the glass in it.” 

Suppose Percy Sibwright had come in at such a moment as 
that ? What would he have said, — the enraptured rogue ? 
What would have been all the pictures of disguised beauties in 
his room compared to that living one ? Ah, we are speaking of 
Old times, when Sibwright was a Bachelor and before he got a 
county court, — when people were young — when most people 
were young. Other people are young now ; but we no more. 

When Miss Laura played this prank with the wig, you can’t 
suppose that Pen could have been very ill up stairs ; otherwise, 
though she had grown to care for him ever so little, common 
• sense of feeling and decorum would have prevented her from 
performing any tricks or trying any disguises. 

But all sorts of events had occurred in the course of the last 
few days which had contributed to increase or account for her 
gayety, and a little colony of the reader’s old friends and ac- 
quaintances was by this time established in Lamb Court, 
Temple, and round Pen’s sick-bed there. First, Martha, Mrs. 
Pendennis’s servant, had arrived from Fairoaks, being sum- 
moned thence by the Major, who justly thought her presence 
would be comfortable and useful to her mistress and her young 
master, for neither of whom the constant neighborhood of Mrs. 
Flanagan (who during Pen’s illness required more spirituous 
consolation than ever to support her ) could be pleasant. 
Martha then made her appearance in due season to wait upon 
Mrs. Pendennis, nor did that lady go once to bed until the 
faithful servant had reached her, when, with a heart full of 
maternal thankfulness, she went and lay down upon Warring- 
ton’s straw mattress, and among his mathematical books, as has 
been already described. 


PENDENNIS. 




535 

It is true that ere that day a great and delightful alteration 
in Pen’s condition had taken place. The fever, subjugated by 
Dr. Goodenough’s blisters, potions, and lancet, had left the 
young man, or only returned at intervals of feeble intermit- 
tence ; his wandering senses had settled in his weakened brain : 
he had had time to kiss and bless his mother for coming to him, 
and calling for Laura and his uncle (who were both affected ac- 
cording to their different natures by his wan appearance, his 
lean shrunken hands, his hollow eyes and voice, his thin bearded 
face) to press their hands and thank them affectionately ; and 
after this greeting, and after they had been turned out of the 
room by his affectionate nurse, he had sunk into a fine sleep 
which had lasted about sixteen hours, at the end of which period 
he awoke calling out that he was very hungry. If it is hard to be 
ill and to loathe food, oh, how pleasant to be gettingwell and to 
be feeling hungry — how hungry ! Alas the joys of convales- 
cence become feebler with increasing years, as other joys do — 
and then — and then comes that illness when one does not 
convalesce at all. 

On the day of this happy event, too, came another arrival in 
Lamb Court. This was introduced into the Pen-Warrington 
sitting-room by large puffs of tobacco smoke — the puffs of 
smoke were followed by an individual with a cigar in his mouth, 
and a carpet-bag under his arm — this was Warrington, who had 
run back from Norfolk, when Mr. Bows thoughtfully wrote to 
inform him of his friend’s calamity. But he had been from 
home when Bows’s letter had reached his brother’s house — the 
Eastern Counties did not then boast of a railway (for we beg 
the reader to understand that we only commit anachronisms 
when we choose, ancf when by a daring violation of those natu- 
ral laws some great ethical truth is to be advanced) — in fine, 
Warrington only appeared with the rest of the good luck upon 
the lucky day after Pen’s convalescence may have been said to 
have begun. 

His surprise was, after all, not very great when he found the 
chambers of his sick friend occupied, and his old acquaintance 
the Major seated demurely in an easy-chair (Warrington had let 
himself into the rooms with his own pass-key), listening, or pre- 
tending to listen, to a young lady who was reading to him a 
play of Shakspeare in a low sweet voice. The lady stopped 
and started, and laid down her book at the apparition of the 
tall traveller with the cigar and the carpet-bag. He blushed, 
he flung the cigar into the passage : he took off his hat and 
dropped that too, and going up to the Major, seized that old 
gentleman’s hand, and asked questions about Arthur. 


PENDENNIS. 


53 6 

The Major answered in a tremulous, though cheery voice — • 
it was curious how emotion seemed to olden him — and returning 
Warrington’s pressure with a shaking hand, told him the news 
— of Arthur’s happy crisis, of his mother’s arrival — with her 
young charge — with Miss — 

“ You need not tell me her name,” Mr. Warrington said 
with great animation, for he was affected and elated with the 
thought of his friend’s recovery — “ you need not tell me your 
name. I knew at once it was Laura.” And he held out his 
hand and took hers. Immense kindness and tenderness 
gleamed from under his rough eyebrows, and shook his voice 
as he gazed at her and spoke to her. “ And this is Laura ! ” 
his looks seemed to say. “And this is Warrington,” the gener- 
ous girl’s heart beat back. “ Arthur’s hero — the brave and the 
kind — he has come hundreds of miles to succor him, when he 
heard of his friend’s misfortune ! ” 

“ Thank you, Mr. Warrington,” was all that Laura said, 
however : and as she returned the pressure of his kind hand, 
she blushed so, that she was glad the lamp was behind her to 
conceal her flushing face. 

As these two were standing in this attitude, the door of 
Pen’s bed-chamber was opened stealthily as his mother was 
wont to open it, and Warrington saw another lady, who first 
looked at him, and then turning round towards the bed, said, 
“ Hsh ! ” and put up her hand. 

It was to Pen Helen was turning and giving caution. He 
called out with a feeble, tremulous, but cheery voice, “ Come in 
Stunner — come in, Warrington. I knew it was you — by the — 
by the smoke, old boy,” he said, as holding his worn hand out, 
and with tears at once of weakness and pleasure in his eyes, 
he greeted his friend. 

“ I — I beg your pardon, ma’am, for smoking,” Warrington 
said, who now almost for the first time blushed for his wicked 
propensity. 

Helen only said, “ God bless you, Mr. Warrington.” She 
was so happy she would have liked to kiss George. Then, and 
after the friends had had a brief, very brief interview, the de- 
lighted and inexorable mother, giving her hand to Warrington, 
sent him out of the room too, back to Laura and the Major, 
who had not resumed their play of Cymbeline where they had 
left it off at the arrival of the rightful owner of Pen’s chambers. 


PENDENNIS. 


537 


CHAPTER LIII. 

CONVALESCENCE. 

Our duty now is to record a fact concerning Pendennis, 
which, however shameful and disgraceful, when told regarding 
the chief personage and godfather of a novel, must, neverthe- 
less, be made known to the public who reads his veritable 
memoirs. Having gone to bed ill with fever, and suffering to 
a certain degree under the passion of love, after he had gone 
through his physical malady, and had been bled and had been 
blistered, and had had his head shaved, and had been treated 
and medicamented as the doctor ordained : — it is a fact that, 
when he rallied up from his bodily ailment, his mental malady 
had likewise quitted him, and he was no more in love with 
Fanny Bolton than you or I, who are much too wise or too 
moral, to allow our hearts to go gadding after porters’ 
daughters. 

He laughed at himself as he lay on his pillow, thinking of 
this second cure which had been affected upon him. He did 
not care in the least about Fanny now : he wondered how he 
ever should have cared : and according to his custom made an 
autopsy of that dead passion, and anatomized his own defunct 
sensation for his poor little nurse. What could have made him 
so hot and eager about her but a few weeks back ? Not her 
wit, not her breeding, not her beauty — there were hundreds of 
women better looking than she. It was out of himself that the 
passion had gone : it did not reside in her. She was the same ; 
but the eyes which saw her were changed ; and, alas, that it 
should be so ! were not particularly eager to see her any more. 
He felt very well disposed towards the little thing, and so forth, 
but as for violent personal regard, such as he had but a few 
weeks ago, it had fled under the influence of the pill and lancet, 
which had destroyed the fever in his frame. And an immense 
source of gratitude it was to Pendennis (though there was some- 
thing selfish in that feeling, as in most others of our young 
man), that he had been enabled to resist temptation at the time 
when the danger was greatest, and had no particular cause of 
self-reproach as he remembered his conduct towards the young 
girl. As from a precipice down which he might have fallen, so 
from the fever from which he had recovered, he reviewed the 


PENDENNIS. 


538 

Fanny Bolton snare, now that he had escaped out of it, but I’m 
not sure that he was not ashamed of the very satisfaction which 
he experienced. It is pleasant, perhaps, but it is humiliating to 
own that you love no more. 

Meanwhile the kind smiles and tender watchfulness of the 
mother at his bedside, filled the young man with peace and 
security. To see that health was returning, was all the un- 
wearied nurse demanded : to execute any caprice or order 
of her patient’s, her chiefest joy and reward. He felt himself 
environed by her love, and thought himself almost as grateful 
for it as he had been when weak and helpless in childhood. 

Some misty notions regarding the first part of his illness, 
and that Fanny had nursed him, Pen may have had, but they 
were so dim that he could not realize them with accuracy, or 
distinguish them from what he knew to be delusions, which had 
occurred and were remembered during the delirium of his fever. 
So as he had not thought proper on former occasions to make 
any allusions about Fanny Bolton to his mother, of course he 
could not now confide to her his sentiments regarding Fanny, 
or make this worthy lady his confidante. It was on both sides 
an unlucky precaution and want of confidence ; and a word or 
two in time might have spared the good lady, and those con- 
nected with her, a deal of pain and anguish. 

Seeing Miss Bolton installed as nurse and tender to Pen, I 
am sorry to say Mrs. Pendennis had put the worst construction 
on the fact of the intimacy of these two unlucky young persons, 
and had settled in her own mind that the accusations against 
Arthur were true. Why not have stopped to enquire ? — There 
are stories to a man’s disadvantage that the women who are 
fondest of him are always the most eager to believe. Isn’t a 
man’s wife often the first to be jealous of him ? Poor Pen got 
a good stock of this suspicious kind of love from the nurse who 
was now watching over them ; and the kind and pure creature 
thought that her boy had gone through a malady much more 
awful and debasing than the mere physical fever, and was 
stained by crime as well as weakened by illness. The con- 
sciousness of this she had to bear perforce silently, and to try 
to put a mask of cheerfulness and confidence over her inward 
doubt and despair and horror. 

When Captain Shandon, at Boulogne, read the next number 
of the “ Pall Mall Gazette,” it was to remark to Mrs. Shandon 
that Jack Finucane’s hand was no longer visible in the leading 
articles, and that Mr. Warrington must be at work there again. 
“ I know the crack of his whip in a hundred, and the cut which 


PENDENNIS. 


539 

the fellow’s thong leaves. There’s Jack Bludyer, goes to work 
like a butcher, and mangles a subject. Mr. Warrington finishes 
a man, and lays his cuts neat and regular, straight down the 
back, and drawing blood every line ; ” at which dreadful meta- 
phor, Mrs. Shandon said, “ Law, Charles, how can you talk 
so ! I always thought Mr. Warrington very high, but a kind 
gentleman, and I’m sure he was most kind to the children.” 
Upon which Shandon said, “Yes ; he’s kind to the children; 
but he’s savage to the men; and to be sure, my dear, you don’t 
understand a word about what I’m saying; and it’s best you 
shouldn’t ; for it’s little good comes out of writing for news- 
papers ; and it’s better here, living easy at Boulogne, where the 
wine’s plenty, and the brandy costs but two francs a bottle. 
Mix us another tumbler, Mary, my dear; we’ll go back into 
harness soon. ‘ Cras ingens iterabimus aequor ’ — bad luck 
to it.” 

In a word, Warrington went to work with all his might, in 
place of his prostrate friend, and did Pen’s portion of the “ Pall 
Mall Gazette ” “ with a vengeance,” as the saying is. He 
wrote occasional articles and literary criticisms ; he attended 
theatres and musical performances, and discoursed about them 
with his usual savage energy. His hand was too strong for such 
small subjects, and it pleased him to tell Arthur’s mother, and 
uncle, and Laura, that there was no hand in all the band of 
penmen more graceful and light, more pleasant and more ele- 
gant, than Arthur’s. “ The people in this country, ma’am, 
don’t understand what style is, or they would see the merits of 
our young one,” he said to Mrs. Pendennis. “ I call him ours, 
ma’am, for I bred him ; and I am as proud of him as you are ; 
and, bating a little wilfulness, and a little selfishness, and a 
little dandification, I don’t know a more honest, or loyal, or 
gentle creature. His pen is wicked sometimes, but he is as 
kind as a young lady — as Miss Laura here — and I believe he 
would not do any living mortal harm.” 

At this, Helen, though she heaved a deep, deep sigh, and 
Laura, though she, too, was sadly wounded, nevertheless were 
most thankful for Warrington’s good opinion of Arthur, and 
loved him for being so attached to their Pen. And Major Pen- 
dennis was loud in his praises of Mr. Warrington, — more loud 
and enthusiastic than it was the Major’s wont to be. “ He is 
a gentleman, my dear creature,” he said to Helen, “ every inch a 
gentleman, my good madam — the Suffolk Warringtons — Charles 
the First’s baronets : — what could he be but a gentleman, come 
out of that family ? — father, — Sir Miles Warrington ; ran away 


PENDENNIS. 


540 

with — beg your pardon, Miss Bell. Sir Miles was a very well* 
known man in London, and a friend of the Prince of Wales. 
This gentleman is a man of the greatest talents, the very highest 
accomplishments, — sure to get on, if he had a motive to put 
his energies to work.” 

Laura blushed for herself whilst the Major was talking and 
praising Arthur’s hero. As she looked at Warrington’s manly 
face, and dark, melancholy eyes, this young person had been 
speculating about him, and had settled in her mind that he 
must have been the victim of an unhappy attachment ; and as 
she caught herself so speculating, why, Miss Bell blushed. 

Warrington got chambers hard by, — Grenier’s chambers in 
Flag Court ; and having executed Pen’s task with great energy 
in the morning, his delight and pleasure of an afternoon was 
to come and sit with the sick man’s company in the sunny 
autumn evenings ; and he Rad the honor more than once of 
giving Miss Bell his arm for a walk in the Temple Gardens ; to 
take which pastime, when the frank Laura asked of Helen per- 
mission, the Major eagerly said, “Yes, yes, begad — of course 
you go out with him — it’s like the country, you know ; every- 
body goes out with everybody in the Gardens, and there are 
beadles, you know, and that sort of thing — everybody walks in 
the Temple Gardens.” If the great arbiter of morals did not 
object, why should simple Helen ? She was glad that her girl 
should have such fresh air as the river could give, and to see 
her return with heightened color and spirits from these harmless 
excursions. 

Laura and Helen had come, you must know, to a little ex- 
planation. When the news arrived of Pen’s alarming illness, 
Laura insisted upon accompanying the terrified mother to Lon- 
don, would not hear of the refusal which the still angry Helen 
gave her, and, when refused a second time yet more sternly, 
and when it seemed that the poor lost lad’s life was despaired 
of, and when it was known that his conduct was such as to 
render all thoughts of union hopeless, Laura had, with many 
tears, told her mother a secret with which every observant 
person who reads this story is acquainted already. Now she 
never could marry him, was she to be denied the consolation of 
owning how fondly, how truly, how entirely she had loved him ? 
The mingling tears of the women appeased the agony of their 
grief somewhat, and the sorrows and terrors of their journey 
were at least in so far mitigated that they shared them to- 
gether. 

What could Fanny expect when suddenly brought up for 


PENDENNIS. 


541 

sentence before a couple of such judges ? Nothing but swift 
condemnation, awful punishment, merciless dismissal ! Women 
are cruel critics in cases such as that in which poor Fanny was 
implicated ; and we like them to be so ; for, besides the guard 
which a man places round his own harem, and the defences 
which a woman has in her heart, her faith, and honor, hasn’t 
she all her own friends of her own sex to keep watch that she 
does not go astray, and to tear her to pieces if she is found 
erring ? When our Mahmouds or Selims of Baker Street or 
Belgrave Square visit their Fatimas with condign punishment, 
their mothers sew up Fatima’s sack for her, and her sisters ancl 
sisters-in-law see her well under water. And this present writer 
does not say nay ; he protests most solemnly, he is a Turk too. 
He wears a turban and a beard like another, and is all for the 
sack practice, Bismillah ! But O you spotless, who have the 
right of capital punishment vested in you, at least be very 
cautious that you make away with the proper (if so she may be 
called) person. Be very sure of the fact before you order the 
barge out : and don’t pop your subject into the Bosphorus, until 
you are quite certain that she deserves it. This is all I would 
urge in poor Fatima’s behalf — absolutely all — not a word more, 
by the beard of the Prophet. If she’s guilty, down with her — • 
heave over the sack, away with it into the Golden Horn bubble 
and squeak, and justice being done, give way, men, and let us 
pull back to supper. 

So the Major did not in anyway object to Warrington’s 
continued promenades with Miss Laura, but, like a benevolent 
old gentleman, encouraged in every way the intimacy of that 
couple. Were there any exhibitions in town ? he was for War- 
rington concuc'ing her to them. If Warrington had proposed 
to take her to Vauxhall itself, this most complaisant of men 
would have seen no harm, — nor would Helen, if Pendennis the 
elder had so ruled it, — nor would there have been any harm 
between two persons whose honor was entirely spotless, — be- 
tween Warrington, who saw in intimacy a pure, and high-minded, 
and artless woman for the first time in his life, — and Laura, who 
too for the first time was thrown into the constant society of a 
gentleman of great natural parts and powers of pleasing ; who 
possessed varied acquirements, enthusiasm, simplicity, humor, 
and that freshness of mind which his simple life and habits gave 
him, and which contrasted so much with Pen’s dandy indiffer- 
ence of manner and faded sneer. In Warrington’s very un- 
couthness there was a refinement, which the other’s finery 
lacked. In his energy, his respect, his desire to please, his 


542 


PENDEN.NIS. 


hearty laughter, or simple confiding pathos, what a difference 
to Sultan Pen’s yawning sovereignty and languid acceptance of 
homage ! What had made Pen at home such a dandy and such 
a despot ? The women had spoiled him, as we like them and as 
they like to do. They had cloyed him with obedience, and sur- 
feited him with sweet respect and submission, until he grew 
weary of the slaves who waited upon him, and their caresses 
and cajoleries excited him no more. Abroad, he was brisk and 
lively, and eager and impassioned enough-— most men are, so 
constituted and so nurtured. — Does this, like the former sen- 
tence, run a chance of being misinterpreted, and does any one 
dare to suppose that the writer would incite the women to re- 
volt? Never, by the whiskers of the Prophet, again he sayS. 
He wears a beard, and he likes his women to be slaves. What 
man doesn’t ? What man would be henpecked, I say ? We 
will cut off all the heads in Christendom or^Turkeydom rather 
than that. 

Well, then, Arthur being so languid, and indifferent, and 
careless about the favors bestowed upon him, how came it that 
Laura should have such a love and rapturous regard for him 
that a mere inadequate expression of it should have kept the girl 
talking all the way from Fairoaks to London, as she and Helen 
travelled in the post-chaise ? As soon as Helen had finished 
one story about the dear fellow, and narrated, with a hundred 
sobs and ejaculations, and looks up to heaven some thrilling 
incidents which occurred about the period when the hero was 
breeched, Laura began another equally interesting and equally 
ornamented with tears, and told how heroically he had a tooth 
out or wouldn’t have it out, or how daringly he robbed a bird’s 
nest, or how magnanimously he spared it ; or how he gave a 
shilling to the old woman on the common, or went without his 
bread-and-butter for the beggar-boy who came into the yard — 
and so on. One to another the sobbing women sang laments 
upon their hero, who, my worthy reader has long since perceived, 
is no more a hero than either one of us. Being as he was, why 
should a sensible girl be so fond of him ? 

This point has been argued before in a previous unfortunate 
sentence (which lately drew down all the wrath of Ireland upon 
the writer’s head), and which said that the greatest rascal-cut- 
throats have had somebody to be fond of them, and if those 
monsters, why not ordinary mortals ? And with whom shall a 
young lady fall in love but with the person she sees ? She is 
not supposed to lose her heart in a dream, like a Princess in 
the ft Arabian Nights ; ” or to plight her young affections to 


PENDENNIS. 


543 

the portrait of a gentleman in the Exhibition, or a sketch in the 
“Illustrated London News.” You have an instinct within you 
which inclines you to attach yourself to some one : you meet 
Somebody : you hear Somebody constantly praised : you walk, 
or ride, or waltz, or talk, or sit in the same pew at church with 
Somebody : you meet again, and again, and — “ Marriages are 
made in Heaven,” your dear mamma says, pinning your orange- 
flower wreath on, with her blessed eyes dimmed with tears — 
and there is a wedding breakfast, and you take off your white 
satin and retire to your coach-and-four, and you and he are a 
happy pair. — Or, the affair is broken off, and then, poor dear 
wounded heart ! why then you meet Somebody Else, and twine 
your young affections round number two. It is your nature so 
to do. Do you suppose it is all for the man’s sake that you 
love, and not a bit for your own ? Do you suppose you would 
drink if you were not thirsty, or eat if you were not hungry ? 

So then Laura liked Pen because she saw scarcely anybody 
else at Fairoaks except Doctor Portman and Captain Glanders, 
and because his mother constantly praised her Arthur, and be- 
cause he was gentleman-like, tolerably good-looking and witty, 
and because, above all, it was of her nature to like somebody. 
And having once received this image into her. heart, she there 
tenderly nursed it and clasped it — she there, in his long absences 
and her constant solitudes, silently brooded over it and fondled 
it — and when after this she came to London, and had an oppor- 
tunity of becoming rather intimate with Mr. George Warrington, 
what on earth was to prevent her from thinking him a most odd, 
original, agreeable, and pleasing person ? 

A long time afterwards, when these days were over, and 
Fate in its own way had disposed of the various -persons now 
assembled in the dingy building in Lamb Court, perhaps some 
of them looked back and thought how happy the time was, and 
how pleasant had been their evening talks and little walks and 
simple recreations round the sofa of Pen the convalescent. 
The Major had a favorable opinion of September in London 
from that time forward, and declared at his clubs and in society 
that the dead season in town was often pleasant, doosed 
pleasant, begad ! He used to go home to his lodgings in Bury 
Street of a night, wondering that it was already so late, and 
that the evening had passed away so quietly. Pie made his 
appearance at the Temple pretty constantly in the afternoon, 
and tugged up the long black staircase with quite a benevolent 
activity and perseverance. And he made interest with the chef 
at Bays’s (that renowned cook, the superintendence of whose 


PENDENNIS . 


544 

work upon Gastronomy compelled the gifted author to stay in 
the metropolis), to prepare little jellies, delicate clear soups, 
aspics, and other trifles good for invalids, which Morgan the 
valet constantly brought down to the little Lamb Court colony. 
And the permission to drink a glass or two of pure sherry being 
accorded to Pen by Doctor Goodenough, the Major told with 
almost tears in his eyes how his noble friend the Marquis of 
Steyne, passing through London on his way to the Continent, 
had ordered any quantity of his precious, his priceless Amon- 
tillado, that had been a present from King Ferdinand to the 
noble Marquis, to be placed at the disposal of Mr. Arthur Pen- 
dennis. The widow and Laura tasted it with respect (though 
they didn’t in the least like the bitter flavor), but the invalid 
was greatly invigorated by it, and Warrington pronounced it 
superlatively good, and proposed the Major’s health in a mock 
speech after dinner on the first day when the wine was served, 
and that of Lord Steyne and the aristocracy in general. 

Major Pendennis returned thanks with the utmost gravity, 
and in a speech in which he used the words “ the present 
occasion,” at least the proper number of times. Pen cheered 
with his feeble voice from his arm-chair. Warrington taught 
Miss Laura to cry “ Hear ! hear ! and tapped the table with 
his knuckles. Pidgeon the attendant grinned, and honest 
Doctor Goodenough found the party so merrily engaged, when 
he came in to pay his faithful gratuitous visit. 

Warrington knew Sibwright, who lived below, and that 
gallant gentleman, in reply to a letter informing him of the use 
to which his apartments had been put, wrote back the most 
polite and flowery letter of acquiescence. He placed his cham- 
bers at the service of their fair occupants, his bed at their dis- 
posal, his carpets at their feet. Everybody was kindly disposed 
towards the sick man and his family. His heart (and his 
mother’s too, as we may fancy) melted within him at the thought 
of so much good feeling and good-nature. Let Pen’s biographer 
be pardoned for alluding to a time not far distant when a some- 
what similar mishap brought him a providential friend, a kind 
physician, and a thousand proofs of a most touching and sur- 
prising kindness and sympathy. 

There was a piano in Mr. Sibwright’s chamber (indeed this 
gentleman, a lover of all the arts, performed himself — and ex- 
ceedingly ill too— upon the instrument ; and had had a song 
dedicated to him — the words by himself, the air by his devoted 
friend Leopoldo Twankidillo — and at this music-box, as Mr. 
Warrington called it, Laura, at first with a great deal of tremor 


PENDENNIS. 


545 

and blushing (which became her very much), played and sang, 
sometimes of an evening, simple airs, and old songs of home. 
Her voice was a rich contralto, and Warrington, who scarcely 
knew one tune from another, and who had but one tune or bray 
in his repertoire , — a most discordant imitation of God save the 
King, — sat rapt in delight listening to these songs. He could 
follow their rhythm if not their harmony ; and he could watch, 
with a constant and daily growing enthusiasm, the pure and 
tender and generous creature who made the music. 

I wonder how that poor pale little girl in the black bonnet, 
who used to stand at the lamp-post in Lamb Court sometimes of 
an evening, looking up to the open windows from which the 
music came, liked to hear it ? When Pen’s bedtime came the 
songs were hushed. Lights appeared in the upper room : his 
room, whither the widow used to conduct him ; and then the 
Major and Mr. Warrington, and sometimes Miss Laura, would 
have a game at ecarte or backgammon ; or she would sit by 
working a pair of slippers in worsted — a pair of gentlemen’s 
slippers — they might have been for Arthur or for George or for 
Major Pendennis : one of those three would have given any- 
thing for the slippers. 

Whilst siich business as this was going on within, a rather 
shabby old gentleman would come and lead away the pale girl 
in the black bonnet, who had no right to be abroad in the night 
air, and the Temple porters, the few laundresses, and other 
amateurs who had been listening to the concert, would also dis- 
appear. 

Just before ten o’clock there was another musical perform- 
ance, namely that of the chimes of St. Clement’s clock in the 
Strand, which played the clear cheerful notes of a psalm, before 
it proceeded to ring its ten fatal strokes. As they were ringing, 
Laura began to fold up the slippers: Martha from Fairoaks 
appeared with a bed-candle, and a constant smile on her face ; 
the Major said, “God bless my soul, is it so late?” War- 
rington and he left their unfinished game, and got up and shook 
hands with Miss Bell. Martha from Fairoaks lighted them out 
of the passage and down the stair, and, as they descended, they 
could hear her bolting and locking “ the sporting door ” after 
them, upon her young mistress and herself. If there had been 
any danger, grinning Martha said she would have got down 
“ that thar hooky soord which hung up in gantleman’s room,” 
— meaning the Damascus scimitar with the name of the 
Prophet engraved on the blade and the red-velvet scabbard, 
which Percy Sibwright, Esquire, brought back from his tour in 

35 


PEND ENNIS. 


54-6 

the Levant, along with an Albanian dress, and which he wore 
with such elegant effect at Lady Mullinger’s fancy ball, Glou- 
cester Square, Hyde Park. It entangled itself in Miss Kew- 
sey’s train, who appeared in the dress in which she, with her 
mamma, had been presented to their sovereign (the latter by 
the L — d Ch-nc-ll-r’s lady), and led to events which have 
nothing to do with this history. Is not Miss Kewsey now Mrs. 
Sibwright ? Has Sibwright not got a county court ? — Good- 
night, Laura and Fairoaks Martha. Sleep well and wake 
happy, pure and gentle lady. 

Sometimes after these evenings Warrington would walk a 
little way with Major Pendennis — just a little way — just as far 
as the Temple gate — as the Strand — as Charing Cross — as the 
Club — he was not going into the Club ? Well, as far as Bury 
Street, where he would laughingly shake hands on the Major’s 
own doorstep. They had been talking about Laura all the 
way. It was wonderful how enthusiastic the Major, who, as we 
know, used to dislike her, had grown to be regarding the young 
lady. — “ Dev’lish fine girl, begad. Dev’lish well-mannered girl 
— my sister-in-law has the manners of a duchess and would 
bring up any girl well. Miss Bell’s a little countryfied. But 
the smell of the hawthorn is pleasant, demmy. How she 
blushes. Your London girls would give many a guinea for a 
bouquet like that — natural flowers, begad ! And she’s a little 
money too — nothing to speak of — but a pooty little bit of 
money.” In all which opinions no doubt Mr. Warrington 
agreed ; and though he laughed as he shook hands with the 
Major, his face fell as he left his veteran companion ; and he 
strode back to chambers, and smoked pipe after pipe long into 
the night, and wrote article upon article, more and more savage, 
in lieu of friend Pen disabled. 

Well, it was a happy time for almost all parties concerned. 
Pen mended daily. Sleeping and eating were his constant 
occupations. His appetite was something frightful. He was 
ashamed of exhibiting it before Laura, and almost before his 
mother, who laughed and applauded him. As the roast chicken 
of his dinner went away he eyed the departing friend with sad 
longing, and began to long for jelly, or tea, or what not. He 
was like an ogre for devouring. The Doctor cried stop, but 
Pen would not. Nature called out to him more loudly than 
the Doctor, and that kind and friendly physician handed him 
over with a very good grace to the other healer. 

And here let us speak very tenderly and in the strictest con- 
fidence of an event which befell him, and to which he never 


PEND ENNIS. 


547 

liked an allusion. During his delirium the ruthless Goodenough 
ordered ice to be put to his head, and all his lovely hair to be 
cut. It was done in the time of — of the other nurse, who left 
every single hair of course in a paper for the widow to count 
and treasure up. She never believed but that the girl had 
taken away some of it, but then women are so suspicious upon 
these matters. 

When this direful loss was made visible to Major Pendennis, 
as of course it was the first time the elder saw the poor young 
man's shorn pate, and when Pen was quite out of danger, and 
gaining daily vigor, the Major, with something like blushes and 
a queer wink of his eyes, said he knew of a — a person — a coif- 
feur, in fact — a good man, whom he would send down to the 
Temple, and who would — a — apply — a — a temporary remedy to 
that misfortune. 

Laura looked at Warrington with the archest sparkle in her 
eyes — Warrington fairly burst out into a boohoo of laughter : 
even the widow was obliged to laugh ; and the Major erubes- 
cent confounded the impudence of the young folks, and said 
when he had his hair cut he would keep a lock of it for Miss 
Laura. 

Warrington voted that Pen should wear a barrister’s wig. 
There was Sibwright’s down below, which would become him 
hugely. Pen said “ Stuff,” and seemed as confused as his 
uncle ; and the end was that a gentleman from Burlington 
Arcade waited next day upon Mr. Pendennis, and had a private 
interview with him in his bedroom ; and a .week afterwards the 
same individual appeared with a box under his arm, and an in- 
effable grin of politeness on his face, and announced that he 
had brought ’ome Mr. Pendennis’s ’ead of ’air. 

It must have been a grand but melancholy sight to see Pen 
in the recesses of his apartment, sadly contemplating his 
ravaged beauty and the artificial means of hiding its ruin. He 
appeared at length in the ’ead of ’air; but Warrington laughed 
so that Pen grew sulky, and went back for his velvet cap, a neat 
turban which the fondest of mammas had worked for him. 
Then Mr. Warrington and Miss Bell got some flowers off the 
ladies’ bonnets and made a wreath, with which they decorated 
the wig and brought it out in procession, and did homage before 
it. In fact they indulged in a hundred sports, jocularities, wag- 
geries and petits jeux mnocens : so that the second and third 
floors of Number 6, Lamb Court, Temple, rang with more 
cheerfulness and laughter than had been known in those pre- 
cincts for many a long day. 


PENDENNIS. 


548 

At last after about ten days of this life, one evening when 
the little spy of the court came out to take her usual post of 
observation at the lamp, there was no music from the second- 
floor window, there were no lights in the third-story chambers, 
the windows of each were open, and the occupants were gone. 
Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, told Fanny what had happened. 
The ladies and all the party had gone to Richmond for change 
of air. The antique travelling chariot was brought out again 
and cushioned with many pillows for Pen and his mother ; and 
Miss Laura went in the most affable manner in the omnibus 
under the guardianship of Mr. George Warrington. He came 
back and took possession of his old bed that night in the vacant 
and cheerless chambers, and to his old books and his old pipes, 
but not perhaps to his old sleep. 

The widow had left a jar full of flowers upon his table, 
prettily arranged, and when he entered they filled the solitary 
room with odor. They were memorials of the kind, gentle 
souls who had gone away, and who had decorated for a little 
while that lonely, cheerless place. He had had the happiest 
days of his whole life, George felt — he knew it now they were 
just gone : he went and took up the flowers and put his face to 
them, smelt them — perhaps kissed them. As he put them 
down, he rubbed his rough hand across his eyes with a bitter 
word and laugh. He would have given his whole life and soul 
to win that prize which Arthur rejected. Did she want fame ? 
He would have won it for her : — devotion ? — a great heart full 
of pent-up tenderness and manly love and gentleness was there 
for her, if she might take it. But it might not be. Fate had 
ruled otherwise. “ Even if I could, she would not have me,” 
George thought. “ What has an ugly, rough old fellow like me, 
to make any woman like him ? I’m getting old, and I’ve made 
no mark in life. I’ve neither good looks, nor youth, nor money, 
nor reputation. A man must be able to do something besides 
stare at her and offer on his knees his uncouth devotion, to 
make a woman like him. What can I do ? Lots of young 
fellows have passed me in the race — what they call the prizes of 
life didn’t seem to me worth the trouble of the struggle. But 
for her. If she had been mine and liked a diamond — ah ! 
shouldn’t she have worn it ! Psha, what a fool I am to brag 
of what I would have done ! We are the slaves of destiny. 
Our lots are shaped for us, and mine is ordained long ago. 
Come, let us have a pipe, and put the smell of these flowers out 
of court. Poor little silent flowers ! You’ll be dead to-morrow. 
What business had you to show your red cheeks in this dingy 
place ? ” 


I h NV ENNIS. 


549 

By his bedside George found a new Bible which the widow 
had placed there, with a note inside saying that she had not 
seen the book amongst his collection in a room where she had 
spent a number of hours, and where God had vouchsafed to 
her prayers the life of her son, and that she gave to Arthur’s 
friend the best thing she could, and besought him to read in 
the volume sometimes, and to keep it as a token of a grateful 
mother’s regard and affection. Poor George mournfully kissed 
the book as he had done the flowers ; and the morning found 
him still reading in its awful pages, in which so many stricken 
hearts, in which so many tender and faithful souls have 
found comfort under calamity, and refuge and hope in afflic- 
tion. 


CHAPTER LIV. 
fanny’s occupation’s gone. 

Good Helen, ever since her son’s illness, had taken, as we 
have seen, entire possession of the young man, of his drawers 
and closets and all which they contained : whether shirts that 
wanted buttons, or stockings that required mending, or, must 
it be owned ? letters that lay amongst those articles of raiment, 
and which of course it was necessary that somebody should an- 
swer during Arthur’s weakened and incapable condition. Per- 
haps Mrs. Pendennis was laudably desirous to have some ex- 
planations about the dreadful Fanny Bolton mystery, regarding 
which she had never breathed a word to her son, though it was 
present in her mind always, and occasioned her inexpressible 
anxiety and disquiet. She had caused the brass knocker to be 
screwed off the inner door of the chambers, whereupon the 
postman’s startling double rap would, as she justly argued, dis- 
turb the rest of her patient, and she did not allow him to see 
any letter which arrived, whether from boot-makers who impor- 
tuned him, or hatters who had a heavy account to make up 
against next Saturday, and would be very much obliged if Mr. 
Arthur Pendennis would have the kindness to settle, &c. Of 
these documents, Pen, who was always freehanded and careless, 
of course had his share, and though no great one, one quite 


PEND ENNIS. 


55 ° 

enough to alarm his scrupulous and conscientious mother. She 
had some savings ; Pen’s magnificent self-denial, and her own 
economy, amounting from her great simplicity and avoidance 
of show to parsimony almost, had enabled her to put by a little 
sum of money, a part of which she delightedly consecrated to 
the paying off the young gentleman’s obligations. At this price, 
many a worthy youth and respected reader would hand over 
his correspondence to his parents ; and perhaps there is no 
greater test of a man’s regularity and easiness of conscience, 
than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is 
made happy by the sound of a rat-tat ! The good are eager 
for it : but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. So it 
was very kind of Mrs. Pendennis doubly to spare Pen the 
trouble of hearing or answering letters during his illness. 

There could have been nothing in the young man’s chests 
of drawers and wardrobes which could be considered as incul- 
pating him in any way, nor any satisfactory documents regard- 
ing the Fanny Bolton affair found there, for the widow had to 
ask her brother-in-law if he knew anything about the odious 
transaction, and the dreadful intrigue in which her son was en- 
gaged. When they were at Richmond one day, and Pen with 
Warrington had taken a seat on a bench on the terrace, the 
widow kept Major Pendennis in consultation, and laid her ter- 
rors and perplexities before him, such of them at least (for as 
is the wont of men and women, she did not make quite a clean 
confession, and I suppose no spendthrift asked for a schedule 
of his debts, no lady of fashion asked by her husband for her 
dressmaker’s bills ever sent in the whole of them yet) — such, 
we say, of her perplexities, at least, as she chose to confide to 
her Director for the time being. 

When, then, she asked the Major what course she ought to 
pursue, about this dreadful — this horrid affair, and whether he 
knew anything regarding it ? the old gentleman puckered up 
his face, so that you could not tell whether he was smiling or 
not ; gave the widow one queer look with his little eyes ; cast 
them down to the carpet again, and said, “ My dear, good crea- 
ture, I don’t know anything about it ; and I don’t wish to know 
anything about it ; and, as you ask me my opinion, I think you 
had best know nothing about it too. Young men will be young 
men ; and, begad, my good ma’am, if you think our boy is a 

Jo-” 

“ Pray, spare me this,” Helen broke in, looking very stately. 

“ My dear creature, I did not commence the conversation, 
permit me to say,” the Major said, bowing very blandly. 


PENDENNIS. 


55 1 

“ I can’t bear to hear such a sin — such a dreadful sin — 
spoken of in such a way,” the widow said, with tears of annoy- 
ance starting from her eyes. “ I can’t bear to think that my 
boy should commit such a crime. I wish he had died, almost, 
before he had done it. I don’t know how I survive it myself ; 
for it is breaking my heart, Major Pendennis, to think that his 
father’s son — my child — whom I remember so good — oh, so 
good, and full of honor ! — should be fallen so dreadfully low, 
as to — as to — ” 

' “ As to flirt with a little grisette, my dear creature ? ” said 
the Major. “ Egad, if all the mothers in England were to 
break their hearts because — Nay, nay ; upon my word and 
honor, now, don’t agitate yourself, don’t cry. I can’t bear to 
see a woman’s tears — I never could — never. But how do we 
know that anything serious has happened ? Has Arthur said 
anything? ” 

“ His silence confirms it,” sobbed Mrs. Pendennis, behind 
her pocket-handkerchief. 

“ Not at all. There are subjects, my dear, about which a 
young fellow cannot surely talk to his mamma,” insinuated 
the brother-in-law. 

“ She has written to him,” cried the lady, behind the cam- 
bric. 

“ What, before he was ill ? Nothing more likely.” 

“ No, since,” the mourner with the batiste mask gasped out ; 
“ not before ; that is, I don’t think so — that is, I — ” 

“ Only since ; and you have — yes, I understand. I suppose 
when he was too ill to read his own correspondence, you took 
charge of it, did you ? ” 

“ I am the most unhappy mother in the world,” cried out 
the unfortunate Helen. 

“ The most unhappy mother in the world, because your son 
is a man and not a hermit ! Have a care, my dear sister. If 
you have suppressed any letters to him, you may have done 
yourself a great injury ; and, if I know anything of Arthur’s 
spirit, may cause a difference between him and you, which you’ll 
rue all your life — a difference that’s a dev’lish deal more impor- 
tant, my good madam, than the little — little — trumpery cause 
which originated it.” 

“ There was only one letter,” broke out Helen, — “ only a very 
little one — only a few words. Here it is — oh — how can you, 
how can you speak so ? ” 

When the good soul said only “ a very little one,” the Major 
could not speak at all, so inclined was he to laugh, in spite of 


PENDENNIS . 


55 2 

the agonies of the poor soul before him, and for whom he had 
a hearty pity and liking too. But each was looking at the mat' 
ter with his or her peculiar eyes and view of morals, and the 
Major’s morals, as the reader knows, were not those of an 
ascetic. 

“ I recommend you,” he gravely continued, “ if you can, to 
seal it up — those letters ain’t unfrequently sealed with wafers — 
and to put it amongst Pen’s other letters, and let him have them 
when he calls for them. Or if we can’t seal it, we mistook it 
for a bill.” 

“ I can’t tell my son a lie,” said the widow. It had been 
put silently into the letter-box two days previous to their depart- 
ure from the Temple, and had been brought to Mrs. Pendennis 
by Martha. She had never seen Fanny’s handwriting, of course ; 
but when the letter was put into her hands, she knew the author 
at once. She had been on the watch for that letter every day 
since Pen had been ill. She had opened some of his other 
letters because she wanted to get at that one. She had the 
horrid paper poisoning her bag at that moment. She took it 
out and offered it to her brother-in-law. 

“ Arthur Pendennis, Esq.” he read, in a timid little sprawl- 
ing handwriting, and with a sneer on his face. “ No, my dear, 
I won’t read any more. But you who have read it, may tell me 
what the letter contains — only prayers for his health in bad 
spelling, you say — and a desire to see him ? Well — there is no 
harm in that. And as you ask me ” — here the Major began to 
look a little queer for his own part, and put on his demure look 
— “ as you ask me, my dear, for information, why, I don’t mind 
telling you that — ah — that — Morgan, my man, has made some 
inquiries regarding this affair, and that — my friend Doctor 
Goodenough also looked into it — and it appears that this per- 
son was greatly smitten with Arthur ; that he paid for her and 
took her to Vauxhall Gardens, as Morgan heard from an old 
acquaintance of Pen’s and ours, an Irish gentleman, who was 
very nearly once having the honor of being the — from an Irish 
man, in fact ; — that the girl’s father, a violent man of intoxi- 
cated habits, has beaten her mother, who persists in declaring 
her daughter’s entire innocence to her husband on the one 
hand, while on the other she told Goodenough that Arthur had 
acted like a brute to her child. And so you see the story re- 
mains in a mystery. Will you have it cleared up ? I have but 
to ask Pen, and he will tell me at once — he is as honorable a 
man as ever lived.” 

“ Honorable ! ” said the widow, with bitter scorn. “ Oh, 


PENDENNIS. 


553 

brother, what is this you call honor? If my boy has been 
guilty, he must marry her. I would go down on my knees and 
pray him to do so.” 

“ Good God ! are you mad ? ” screamed out the Major ; 
and remembering former passages in Arthur’s history and 
Helen’s,, the truth came across his mind that, were Helen to 
make this prayer to her son, he would marry the girl : he was 
wild enough and obstinate enough commit any folly when a 
woman he loved was in the case. “ My dear sister, have you 
lost your senses ? ” he continued (after an agitated pause, dur- 
ing which the above dreary reflection crossed him) ; and in a 
softened tone, “ What right have we to suppose that anything 
has passed between this girl and him ? Let’s see the letter. 
Her heart is breaking ; pray, pray, write to me — home unhappy 
— unkind father — your nurse — poor little Fanny — spelt, as you 
say, in a manner to outrage all sense of decorum. But, good 
heavens ! my dear, what is there in this ? only that the little 
devil is making love to him still. Why she didn’t come into 
his chambers until he was so delirious that he didn’t know her. 
Whatd’youcallem, Flanagan, the laundress, told Morgan, my 
man, so. She came in company of an old fellow, an old Mr. 
Bows, who came most kindly down to Stillbrook and brought 
me away — by the way, I left him in the cab, and never paid the 
fare ; and dev’lish kind it was of him. No, there’s nothing in 
the story.” 

“ Do you think so ? Thank Heaven — thank God ! ” Helen 
cried. “ I’ll take the letter to Arthur and ask him now. Look 
at him there. He’s on the terrace with Mr. Warrington. They 
are talking to some children. My boy was always fond of 
children. He’s innocent, thank God — thank God ! Let me 
go to him.” 

Old Pendennis had his own opinion. When he briskly took 
the not guilty side of the case, but a moment before, very likely 
the old gentleman had a different view from that which he 
chose to advocate, and judged of Arthur by what he himself 
would have done. If she goes to Arthur, and he speaks the 
truth, as the rascal will, it spoils all, he thought. And he tried 
one more effort. 

“ My dear, good soul,” he said, taking Helen’s hand and 
kissing it, “as your son has not acquainted you with this affair, 
think if you have any right to examine it. As you believe him 
to be a man of honor, what right have you to doubt his honor 
in this instance ? Who is his accuser ? . An anonymous 
scoundrel who has brought no specific charge against him. If 


PENDENNIS. 


554 

there were any such, wouldn’t the girl’s parents have come for- 
ward ? He is not called upon to rebut, nor you to entertain 
an anonymous accusation ; and as for believing him guilty 
because a girl of that rank happened to be in his rooms acting 
as nurse to him, begad you might as well insist upon his marry- 
ing that dem’d old Irish gin-drinking laundress, Mrs. Flanagan.” 

The widow burst out laughing through her tears — the vic- 
tory was gained by the old general. 

“ Marry Mrs. Flanagan, by Ged,” he continued, tapping her 
slender hand. “ No. The boy has told you nothing about it, 
and you know nothing about it. The boy is innocent — of 
course. And what, my good soul, is the course for us to pur- 
sue ? Suppose he is attached to this girl — don’t look sad again, 
it’s merely a supposition — and begad a young fellow may have 
an attachment, mayn’t he ? — Directly he gets well he will be at 
her again.” 

“ He must come home ! We must go off directly to Fair- 
oaks,” the widow cried out. 

“ My good creature, he’ll bore himself to death at Fairoaks. 
He’ll have nothing to do but to think about his passion 
there. There’s no place in the world for making a little passion 
into a big one, and where a fellow feeds on his thoughts, like 
a lonely country-house where there’s nothing to do. We must 
occupy him : amuse him : we must take him abroad : he’s 
never been abroad except to Paris for a lark. We must travel 
a little. He must have a nurse with him, to take great care of 
him, for Goodenough says he had a dev’lish narrow squeak of 
it (don’t look frightened), and so you must come and watch : 
and I suppose you’ll take Miss Bell, and I should like to ask 
Warrington to come. Arthur’s dev’lish fond of Warrington. 
He can’t do without Warrington. Warrington’s family is one 
of the oldest in England, and he is one of the best young fel- 
lows I ever met in my life. I like him exceedingly.” 

“ Does Mr. Warrington know anything about this — this af- 
fair?” asked Helen. “He had been away, I know, for two 
months before it happened ; Pen wrote me so.” 

“Not a word — I — I’ve asked him about it. I’ve pumped 
him. He never heard of the transaction, never ; I pledge you 
my word,” cried out the Major, in some alarm. “ And, my 
dear, I think you had much best not talk to him about it — 
much best not — of course not : the subject is most delicate and 
painful.” 

The simple widow took her brother’s hand and pressed it. 
“ Thank you, brother,” she said. “ You have been very, very 


PENDENNIS. 


555 

kind to me. You have given me a great deal of comfort. I’ll 
go to my room, and think of what you have said. This illness 
and these — these emotions — have agitated me a great deal ; and 
I’m not very strong, you know. But I’ll go and thank God 
that my boy is innocent. He is innocent. Isn’t he, sir? ” 

“Yes, my dearest creature, yes,” said the old fellow, kissing 
her affectionately, and quite overcome by her tenderness. He 
looked after her as she retreated, with a fondness which was 
rendered more piquant, as it were, by the mixture of a certain 
scorn which accompanied it. “ Innocent ! ” he said ;• “ I’d 
swear, till I was black in the face, he was innocent, rather than 
give that good soul pain.” 

Having achieved this victory the fatigued and happy war- 
rior laid himself down on a sofa, and put his yellow silk pocket- 
handkerchief over his face, and indulged in a snug little nap, of 
which the dreams, no doubt, were very pleasant, as he snored 
with refreshing regularity. The young men sat, meanwhile, 
dawdling away the sunshiny hours on the terrace, very happy, 
and Pen, at least, very talkative. He was narrating to War- 
rington a plan for a new novel, and a tragedy. By Jove, he 
would show that he could ; and he began to spout some of the 
lines of his play. 

The little solo on the wind instrument which the Major was 
performing was interrupted by the entrance of Miss Bell. She 
had been on a visit to her old friend, Lady Rockminster, who 
had taken a summer villa in the neighborhood ; and who, hear- 
ing of Arthur’s illness, and his mother’s arrival at Richmond, 
had visited the latter ; and, for the benefit of the former, whom 
she didn’t like, had been prodigal of grapes, partridges, and 
other attentions. For Laura the old lady had a great fondness, 
and longed that she should come and stay with her ; but Laura 
could not leave her mother at this juncture. Worn out by con- 
stant watching over Arthur’s health, Helen’s own had suffered 
very considerably ; and Doctor Goodenough had had reason to 
prescribe for her as well as for his younger patient. 

Old Pendennis started up on the entrance of the young lady. 
His slumbers were easily broken. He made her a gallant 
speech — he had been full of gallantry towards her of late. 
Where had she been gathering those roses which she wore on 
her cheeks ? How happy he was to be disturbed out of his 
dreams by such a charming reality ! Laura had plenty of hu- 
mor and honesty ; and these two caused her to have on her 
side something very like a contempt for the old gentleman. It 
delighted her to draw out his worldliness, and to make the old 


PEND ENNIS. 


556 

habitue of clubs and drawing-rooms tell his twaddling tales 
about great folks, and expound his views of morals. 

Not in this instance, however, was she disposed to be satiri- 
cal. She had been to drive with Lady Rockminster in the 
Park, she said ; and she had brought home game for Pen, and 
flowers for mamma. She looked very grave about mamma. 
She had just been with Mrs. Pendennis. Helen was very much 
worn, and she feared she was very, very ill. Her large eyes 
filled with tender marks of sympathy which she felt in her be- 
loved friend’s condition. She was alarmed about her. Could 
not that good — that dear Doctor Goodenough — cure her ? 

“Arthur’s illness, and other mental anxiety,” the Major 
slowly said, “ had, no doubt, shaken Helen.” A burning blush 
upon the girl’s face showed that she understood the old man’s 
allusions. But she looked him full in the face and made no 
reply. “ He might have spared me that,” she thought. “What 
is he aiming at in recalling that shame to me ? ” 

That he had an aim in view is very possible. The old di- 
plomatist seldom spoke without some such end. Doctor Good- 
enough had talked to him, he said, about their dear friend’s 
health, and she wanted rest and change of scene — yes, change 
of scene. Painful circumstances which had occurred must be 
forgotten and never alluded to ; he begged pardon for even 
hinting at them to Miss Bell — he never should do so again — • 
nor, he was sure, would she. Everything must be done to 
soothe and comfort their friend, and his proposal was that they 
should go abroad for the autumn to a watering-place in the 
Rhine neighborhood, where Helen might rally her exhausted 
spirits, and Arthur try and become a new man. Of course, 
Laura would not forsake her mother. 

Of course not. It was about Llelen, and Helen only — that 
is, about Arthur too for her sake, that Laura was anxious. She 
would go abroad or anywhere with Helen. 

And Helen having thought the matter over for an hour in 
her room, had by that time grown to be as anxious for the 
tour as any schoolboy, who has been reading a book of voy- 
ages, is eager to go to sea. Whither should they go ? the farther 
the better — to some place so remote that even recollection 
could not follow them thither : so delightful that Pen should 
never want to leave it — anywhere so that he could be happy. 
She opened her desk with trembling fingers and took out her 
banker’s book, and counted up her little savings. If more was 
wanted, she had the diamond cross. She v.ould borrow from 
Laura again. “ Let us go — let us go,” she thought ; “ directly 


PENDENNIS . 


557 

he can bear the journey let us go away. Come, kind Doctor 
Gooclenough — come quick, and give us leave to quit Eng- 
land.’* 

The good Doctor drove over to dine with them that very 
day. “ If you agitate yourself so,” he said to her, “ and if your 
heart beats so, and if you persist in being so anxious about a 
young gentleman who is getting well as fast as he can, we 
shall have you laid up, and Miss Laura to watch you ; and 
then it will be her turn to be ill, and I should like to know how 
the deuce a doctor is to live who is obliged to come and attend 
you all for nothing ? Mrs. Goodenough is already jealous of 
you, and says, with perfect justice, that I fall in love with my 
patients. And you must please to get out of the country as 
soon as ever you can, that I may have a little peace in my 
family.” 

When the plan of going abroad was proposed to Arthur, it 
was received by that gentleman with the greatest alacrity and 
enthusiasm. He longed to be off at once. He let his mus- 
taches grow from that very moment, in order, I suppose, that 
he might get his mouth into training for a perfect French and 
German pronunciation ; and he was seriously disquieted in his 
mind because the mustaches, when they came, were of a decid- 
edly red color. He had looked forward to an autumn at Fair- 
oaks • and perhaps the idea of passing two or three months 
there did not amuse the young man. “ There is not a soul to 
speak to in the place,” he said to Warrington. “ I can’t stand 
old Portman’s sermons, and pompous after-dinner conversa- 
tion. I know all old Glanders’s stories about the Peninsular 
war. The Claverings are the only Christian people in the 
neighborhood, and they are not to be at home before Christ- 
mas, my uncle says : besides, Warrington, I want to get out of 
the country. Whilst you were away, confound it, I had a 
temptation, from which I am very thankful to have escaped, 
and which I count that even my illness came very luckily to 
put an end to.” And here he narrated to his friend the cir- 
cumstances of the Vauxhall affair, with which the reader is 
already acquainted. 

Warrington looked very grave when he heard this story. 
Putting the moral delinquency out of the question, he was 
extremely glad for Arthur's sake that the latter had escaped 
from a danger which might have made his whole life wretched ; 
“which certainly,” said Warrington, “would have occasioned 
the wretchedness and ruin of the other party. And your mother 
and — and your friends — what a pain it would have been to 


PENDENNIS. 


558 

them ! ” urged Pen’s companion, little knowing what grief and 
annoyance these good people had already suffered. 

“Not a word to my mother ! ” Pen cried out, in a state of 
great alarm. “ She would never get over it. An esclandre of 
that sort would kill her, I do believe. And,” he added, with a 
knowing air, and as if, like a young rascal of a Lovelace, he 
had been engaged in what are called affaires de coeur all his 
life ; “ the best way, when a danger of that sort menaces, is 
not to face it, but to turn one’s back on it and run.” 

“And were you very much smitten ? ” Warrington asked. 

“ Hm ! ” said Lovelace. “ She dropped her h’s, but she 
was a dear little girl.” 

O Clarissas of this life, O you poor little ignorant vain fool- 
ish maidens ! if you did but know the way in which the Love- 
laces speak of you: if you could but hear Jack talking to Tom 
across the coffee-room of a Club ; or see Ned taking your poor 
little letters out of his cigar-case, and handing them over to 
Charley, and Billy, and Harry across the mess-room table, you 
would not be so eager to write, or so ready to listen ! There’s 
a sort of crime which is not complete unless the lucky rogue 
boasts of it afterwards ; and the i^ian who betrays your honor 
in the first place, is pretty sure, remember that, to betray your 
secret too. 

“ It’s hard to fight, and it’s easy to fall,” Warrington said 
gloomily. “ And as you say, Pendennis, when a danger like 
this is imminent, the best way is to turn your back on it and 
run.” 

After this little discourse upon a subject about which Pen 
would have talked a great deal more eloquently a month back, 
the conversation reverted to the plans for going abroad, and 
Arthur eagerly pressed his friend to be of the party. Warring- 
ton was a part of the family — a part of the cure. Arthur said 
he should not have half the pleasure without Warrington. 

But George said No, he couldn’t go. He must stop at 
home and take Pen’s place. The other remarked that that was 
needless, for Shandon was now come back to London, and 
Arthur was entitled to a holiday. 

“ Don’t press me,” Warrington said, “ I can’t go. I’ve par- 
ticular engagements. I’m best at home. I’ve not got the 
money to travel, that’s the long and short of it — for travelling 
costs money, you know.” 

This little obstacle seemed fatal to Pen. He mentioned it 
to his mother: Mrs. Pendennis was very sorry; Mr, Warring- 
tion had been exceedingly kind ; but she supposed he knew 


PENDENNIS. 


559 

best about his affairs. And then, no doubt, she reproached 
herself for selfishness in wishing to carry the boy off and have 
him to herself altogether. 

“ What is this I hear from Pen, my dear Mr. Warrington ? ” 
the Major asked one day, when the pair were alone and after 
Warrington’s objection had been stated to him. “ Not go with 
us ? We can’t hear of such a thing — Pen won’t get well with- 
out you. I promise you, I’m not going to be his nurse. He 
must have somebody with him that’s stronger and gayer and 
better able to amuse him than a rheumatic old fogy like me. I 
shall go to Carlsbad very likely, when I’ve seen you people 
settle down. Travelling costs nothing nowadays — or so little! 
And — and pray, Warrington, I remember that I was your fa- 
ther’s very old friend, and if you and your brother are not on 
such terms as to enable you to — to anticipate your younger 
brother’s allowance, I beg you to make me your banker, foi 
hasn’t Pen been getting into your debt these three weeks past, 
during which you have been doing what he informs me is his 
work, with such exemplary talent and genius, begad ? ” 

Still, in spite of this kind offer and unheard-of generosity on 
the part of the Major, George Warrington refused, and said he 
would stay at home. But it was with faltering voice and an 
irresolute accent which showed how much he would like to go, 
though his tongue persisted in saying nay. 

But the Major’s persevering benevolence was not to be 
baulked in this way. At the tea-table that evening, Helen hap- 
pening to be absent from the room for the moment, looking for 
Pen who had gone to roost, old Pendennis returned to the 
charge, and rated Warrington for refusing to join in their ex- 
cursion. “ Isn’t it ungallant, Miss Bell ?” he said, turning to 
that young lady. “ Isn’t it unfriendly ? Here we have been 
the happiest party in the world, and this odious selfish creature 
breaks it up ! ” 

Miss Bell’s long eyelashes look down towards her teacup : 
and Warrington blushed hugely but did not speak. Neither 
did Miss Bell speak : but when he blushed she blushed too. 

“ You ask him to come, my dear,” said the benevolent old 
gentleman, “ and then perhaps he will listen to you — ” 

“ Why should Mr. Warrington listen to me ? ” asked the 
young lady, putting the query to her teaspoon seemingly and 
not to the Major. 

“ Ask him ; you have not asked him,” said Pen s artless 
uncle. 


PEHDENMS. 


56° 

“ I should be very glad, indeed, if Mr. Warrington would 
come,” remarked Laura to the teaspoon. 

“ Would you ? ” said George. 

She looked up and said, “ Yes.” Their eyes met. “I will 
go anywhere you ask me, or do anything,” said George, lowly, 
and forcing out the words as if they gave him pain. 

Old Pendennis was delighted * the affectionate old creature 
clapped his hands and cried “ Bravo ! bravo ! It’s a bargain 
— a bargain, begad! Shake hands on it, young people!” 
And Laura, with a look full of tender brightness, put out her 
hand to Warrington. He took hers : his face indicated a 
strange agitation. He seemed to be about to speak, when, 
from Pen’s neighboring room Helen entered, looking at them 
as the candle which she held lighted her pale frightened face. 

Laura blushed more red than ever and withdrew her hand. 

“ What is it ? ” Helen asked. 

“ It’s a bargain we have been making, my dear creature,” 
Said the Major in his most caressing voice. “ We have just 
bound over Mr. Warrington in a promise to come abroad with 
us.” 

“ Indeed ! ” Helen said. 


CHAPTER LY. 

IN WHICH FANNY ENGAGES A NEW MEDICAL MAN. 

Could Helen have suspected that, with Pen’s returning 
strength, his unhappy partiality for little Fanny would also re- 
awaken ? Though she never spoke a word regarding that 
young person, after her conversation with the Major, and 
though, to all appearance, she utterly ignored Fanny’s existence, 
yet Mrs. Pendennis kept a particularly close watch upon all 
Master Arthur’s actions ; on the plea of ill-health, would 
scarcely let him out of her sight ; and was especially anxious 
that he should be spared the trouble of all correspondence for 
the present at least. Very likely Arthur looked at his own 
letters with some terror ; very likely, as he received them at the 
family table, feeling his mother’s watch upon him (though the 
good soul’s eye seemed fixed upon her teacup or her book), he 
expected daily to see a little handwriting, which he would have 
known, though he had never seen it yet, and his heart beat as 


PENDENNIS . 


5 6 * 

he received the letters to his address. Was he more pleased 
or annoyed, that, day after day, his expectations were not 
realized ; and was his mind relieved, that there came no letter 
from Fanny ? Though, no doubt, in these matters, when Love- 
lace is tired of Clarissa (or the contrary), it is best- for both 
parties to break at once, and each, after the failure of the 
attempt at union, to go his own way, and pursue his course 
through life solitary ; yet our self-love, or our pity, or our sense 
of decency, does not like that sudden bankruptcy. Before we 
announce to the world that our firm of Lovelace and Co. can’t 
meet its engagements, we try to make compromises ; we have 
mournful meetings of partners : we delay the putting up of the 
shutters, and the dreary announcement of the failure. It must 
come : but we pawn our jewels to keep things going a little 
longer. On the whole, I dare say, Pen was rather annoyed 
that he had no remonstrances from Fanny. What ! could she 
part from him, and never so much as once look round? could 
she sink, and never once hold a little hand out, or cry, “ Help, 
Arthur ! ” Well, well : they don’t all go down who venture on 
that voyage. Some few drown when the vessel founders ; but 
most are only ducked, and scramble to shore. And the reader’s 
experience of A. Pendennis, Esquire, of the Upper Temple, will 
enable him to state whether that gentleman belonged to the 
class of persons who were likely to sink or to swim. 

Though Pen was as yet too weak to walk half a mile ; and 
might not, on account of his precious health, be trusted to take 
a drive in a carriage by himself, and without a nurse in attend- 
ance; yet Helen could not keep watch over Mr. Warrington 
too, and had no authority to prevent that gentleman from going 
to London if business called him thither. Indeed, if he had 
gone and stayed, perhaps the widow, from reasons of her own, 
would have been glad ; but she checked these selfish wishes as 
soon as she ascertained or owned them ; and, remembering 
Warrington’s great regard and services, and constant friendship 
for her boy, received him as a member of her family almost, 
with her usual melancholy kindness and submissive acquies- 
cence. Yet somehow, one morning when his affairs called him 
to town, she divined what Warrington’s errand was, and that 
he was gone to London to get news about Fanny for Pen. 

Indeed, Arthur had had some talk with his friend, and told 
him more at large what his adventures had been with Fanny 
(adventures which the reader knows already), and what were 
his feelings respecting her. He was very thankful that he had 
escaped the great danger, to W. ich Warrington said Amen 

3 6 


PEND ENNIS, 


562 

heartily ; that he had no great fault wherewith to reproach him- 
self in regard of his behavior to her, but that if they parted, as 
they must, he would be glad to say a God bless her, and to 
hope that she would remember him kindly. In this discourse 
with Warrington he spoke upon these matters with so much 
gravity, and so much emotion, that George, who had pronounced 
himself most strongly for the separation too, began to fear that 
his friend was not so well cured as he boasted of being ; and 
that, if the two were to come together again, all the danger and 
the temptation might hav£ to be fought once more. And with 
what result ? “ It is hard to struggle, Arthur, and it is easy to 

fall,” Warrington said: “and the best courage for us poor 
wretches is to fly from danger. I would not have been what I 
am now, had I practised what I preach.” 

“ And what did you practise, George ? ” Pen asked, eagerly. 
“I knew there was something. Tell us about it, Warrington.” 

“ There was something that can’t be mended, and that 
shattered my whole fortunes early,” Warrington answered. “ I 
said I would tell you about it some day, Pen ; and will, but not 
now. Take the moral without the fable now, Pen, my boy : 
and if you want to see a man whose whole life has been 
wrecked, by an unlucky rock against which he struck as a boy 
— here he is, Arthur, and so I warn you.” 

We have shown how Mr. Huxter, in writing home to his 
Clavering friends, mentioned that there was a fashionable club 
in London of which he was an attendant, and that he was there 
in the habit of meeting an Irish officer of distinction, who, 
amongst other news, had given that intelligence regarding Pen- 
dennis which the young surgeon had transmitted to Clavering. 
This club was no other than the Back Kitchen, where the dis- 
ciple of Saint Bartholomew was accustomed to meet the General, 
the peculiarities of whose brogue, appearance, disposition, and 
general conversation, greatly diverted many young gentlemen 
who used the Back Kitchen as a place of nightly entertainment 
and refreshment. Huxter, who had a fine natural genius for 
mimicking everything, whether it was a favorite tragic or comic 
actor, a cock on a dunghill, a corkscrew going into a bottle and 
a cork issuing thence, or an Irish officer of genteel connections 
who offered himself as an object of imitation with only too 
much readiness, talked his talk, and twanged his poor old long- 
bow whenever drink, a hearer, and an opportunity occurred, 
studied our friend the General with peculiar gusto, and drew 
the honest fellow out many a night. A bait, consisting of six- 


PENDENNIS. 


5^3 

pennyworth of brandy-and-water, the worthy old man was sure 
to swallow : and under the influence of this liquor, who was 
more happy than he to tell his stories of his daughter’s triumphs 
and his own, in love, war, drink, and polite society? Thus 
Huxter was enabled to present to his friends many pictures of 
Costigan : of Costigan fighting a jewel in the Phaynix — of Cos- 
tigan and his interview with the Juke of York — of Costigan at 
his sonunlaw’s teeble, surrounded by the nobilitee of his coun- 
tree — of Costigan, when crying drunk, at which time he was in 
the habit of confidentially lamenting his daughter’s ingratichewd, 
and stating that his gray hairs were hastening to a praymachure 
greeve. And thus our friend was the means of bringing a num- 
ber of young fellows to the Back Kitchen, who consumed the 
landlord’s liquors whilst they relished the General’s peculiari- 
ties, so that mine host pardoned many of the latter’s foibles, in 
consideration of the good which they brought to his house. 
Not the highest position in life was this certainly, or one which, 
if we had a reverence for an old man, we would be anxious that 
he should occupy : but of this aged buffoon it may be mentioned 
that he had no particular idea that his condition of life was not 
a high one, and that in his whiskeyed blood there was not a 
black drop, nor in his muddled brains a bitter feeling, against 
any mortal being. Even his child, his cruel Emily, he would 
have taken to his heart and forgiven with tears ; and what 
more can one say of the Christian charity of a man than that 
he is actually ready to forgive those who have done him every 
kindness, and with whom he is wrong in a dispute ? 

There was some idea amongst the young men who frequented 
the Back Kitchen, and made themselves merry with the society 
of Captain Costigan, that the Captain made a mystery regard- 
ing his lodgings for fear t of duns, or from a desire of privacy, 
and lived in some wonderful place. Nor would the landlord of 
the premises, when questioned upon this subject, answer any 
inquiries ; his maxim being that he only knew gentlemen who 
frequented that room, in that room ; that when they quitted that 
room, having paid their scores as gentlemen, and behaved as 
gentlemen, his communication with them ceased ; and that, as 
a gentleman himself, he thought it was only impertinent curi- 
osity to ask where any other gentleman lived. Costigan, in his 
most intoxicated and confidential moments, also evaded any 
replies to questions or hints addressed to him on this subject : 
there was no particular secret about it, as we have seen, who 
have had more than once the honor of entering his apartments, 
but in the vicissitudes of a long life he had been pretty pften in 


PENDENNIS . 


564 

the habit of residing in houses where privacy was necessary to 
his comfort, and where the appearance of some visitors would 
have brought him anything but pleasure. Hence all sorts of 
legends were formed by wags or credulous persons respecting 
his place of abode. It was stated that he slept habitually in a 
a watch-box in the City ; in a cab at a mews, where a cab pro- 
prietor gave him a shelter : in the Duke of York’s Column, &c., 
the wildest of these theories being put abroad by the facetious 
and imaginative Huxter. For Huxey, when not silenced by 
the company of “ swells,” and when in the society of his own 
friends, was a very different fellow to the youth whom we have 
seen cowed by Pen’s impertinent airs, and, adored by his family 
at home, was the life and soul of the circle whom he met, either 
round the festive board or the dissecting-table. 

On one brilliant September morning, as Huxter was regaling 
himself with a cup of coffee at a stall in Covent Garden, having 
spent a delicious night dancing at Vauxhall, he spied the General 
reeling down Henrietta Street, with a crowd of hooting black- 
guard boys at his heels, who had left their beds under the 
arches of the river betimes, and were prowling about already 
for breakfast, and the strange livelihood of the day. The poor 
old General was not in that condition when the sneers and 
jokes of these young beggars had much effect upon him : the 
cabmen and watermen at the cab-stand knew him, and passed 
their comments upon him : the policemen gazed after him, and 
warned the boys olf him, with looks of scorn and pity : what 
did the scorn and pity of men, the jokes of ribald children, 
matter to the General ? He reeled along the street with glazed 
eyes, having just sense enough to know whither he was bound, 
and to pursue his accustomed beat homewards. He went to 
bed not knowing how he had reached it, as often as any man 
in London. He woke and found himself there, and asked no 
questions ; and he was tacking about on this daily though 
perilous voyage, when, from his station at the coffee-stall, Huxter 
spied him. To note his friend, to pay his twopence (indeed, 
he had but eightpence left, or he would have had a cab from 
Vauxhall to take him home), was with the eager Huxter the 
work of an instant — Costigan dived down the alleys by Drury 
Lane Theatre, where gin-shops, oyster-shops, and theatrical 
wardrobes abound, the proprietors of which were now asleep 
behind their shutters, as the pink morning lighted up their 
chimneys; and through these courts Huxter followed the 
General, until he reached Oldcastle Street, in which is the gate 
of Shepherd’s Inn. 




THE CAPTAIN WON’T GO HOME TILL MORNING. 








PENDENNIS. 


5 6 S 

Here, just as he was within sight of home, a luckless slice 
of orange-peel came between the General’s heel and the pave- 
ment, and caused the poor old fellow to fall backwards. 

Huxter ran up to him instantly, and after a pause, during 
which the veteran, giddy with his fall and his previous whiskey, 
gathered, as he best might, his dizzy brains together, the young 
surgeon lifted up the limping General, and very kindly and 
•good-naturedly offered to conduct him to his home. For 
some time, and in reply to the queries which the student of 
medicine put to him, the muzzy General refused to say where 
his lodgings were, and declared that they were hard by, and 
that he could reach them without difficulty ; and he disengaged 
himself from Huxter’s arm, and made a rush, as if to get to his 
own home unattended : but he reeled and lurched so, that the 
young surgeon insisted upon accompanying him, and, with 
many soothing expressions and cheering and consolatory 
phrases, succeeded in getting the General’s dirty old hand 
under what he called his own fin, and led the old fellow, moan- 
ing piteously, across the street. He stopped when he came to 
the ancient gate, ornamented with the armorial bearings of the 
venerable Shepherd. “ Here ’tis,” said he, drawing up at the 
portal, and he made a successful pull at the gate-bell, which 
presently brought out old Mr. Bolton, the porter, scowling 
fiercely, and grumbling as he w r as used to do every morning 
W’hen it became his turn to let in that early bird. 

Costigan tried to hold Bolton for a moment in genteel con- 
versation, but the other surlily would not. “ Don’t bother me,” 
he said ; “ go to your hown bed, Capting, and don’t keep honest 
men out of theirs.” So the Captain tacked across the square 
and reached his own staircase, up which he stumbled with the 
worthy Huxter at his heels. Costigan had a key of his own, 
which Huxter inserted into the keyhole for him, so that there 
was no need to call up little Mr. Bows from the sleep into which 
the old musician had next long since fallen, and Huxter having 
aided to disrobe his tipsy patient, and ascertained that no bones 
were broken, helped him to bed, and applied compresses and 
water to one of his knees and shins, which, with the pair of 
trousers which encased them, Costigan had severely torn in his 
fall. At the General’s age, and with his habit of body, such 
wounds as he had inflicted on himself are slow to heal : a good 
deal of inflammation ensued, and the old fellow lay ill for some 
days suffering both pain and fever. 

Mr. Huxter undertook the case of his interesting patient 
with great confidence and alacrity, and conducted it with be 


PENDENNTS. 


566 

coming skill. He visited his friend day after day, and consoled 
him with lively rattle and conversation, for the absence of the 
society which Costigan needed, and of which he was an orna- 
ment ; and he gave special instructions to the invalid’s nurse 
about the quantity of whiskey which the patient was to take — 
instructions which, as the poor old fellow could not for many 
days get out of his bed or sofa himself, he could not by any 
means infringe. Bows, Mrs. Bolton, and our little friend Fanny, 
when able to do so, officiated at the General’s bedside, and the 
old warrior was made as comfortable as possible under his 
calamity. 

Thus Huxter, whose affable manners and social turn made 
him quickly intimate with persons in whose society he fell, be- 
came pretty soon intimate in Shepherd’s Inn, both with our 
acquaintances in the garrets and those in the Porter’s Lodge. 
He thought he had seen Fanny somewhere : he felt certain that 
he had ; but it is no wonder that he should not accurately re- 
member her, for the poor little thing never chose to tell him 
where she had met him : he himself had seen her at a period, 
when his own views both of persons and of right and wrong 
were clouded by the excitement of drinking and dancing, and 
also little Fanny was very much changed and worn by the fever 
and agitation, and passion and despair, which the past three 
weeks had poured upon the head of that little victim. Borne 
down was the head now, and very pale and wan the face ; and 
many and many a time the sad eyes had looked into the post- 
man’s, as he came to the Inn, and the sickened heart had sunk 
as he passed away. When Mr. Costigan’s accident occurred, 
Fanny was rather glad to have an opportunity of being useful 
and doing something kind — something that would make her for- 
get her own little sorrows perhaps : she felt she bore them better 
whilst she did her duty, though I dare say many a tear dropped 
into the old Irishman’s gruel. Ah, me! stir the gruel well, and 
have courage, little Fanny ! If everybody who has suffered 
from your complaint w r ere to die of it straightway, what a fine 
year the undertakers would have ! 

Whether from compassion for his only patient, or delight in 
his society, Mr. Huxter found now occasion to visit Costigan 
two or three times in the day at least, and if any of the members 
of the Porter’s Lodge family were not in attendance on the 
General, the young doctor was sure to have some particular di- 
rections to address to them at their own place of habitation. 
He was a kind fellow ; he made or purchased toys for the chil- 
dren ; he brought them apples and brandy-balls ; he brought a 


PEND ENNIS. 


567 

mask and frightened them with it, and caused a smile upon the 
face of pale Fanny. He called Mrs. Bolton Mrs. B., and was 
very intimate, familiar, and facetious with that lady, quite dif- 
ferent from that “ aughty artless beast,” as Mrs. Bolton now 
denominated a certain young gentleman of our acquaintance, 
and whom she now vowed she never could abear. 

It was from this lady, who was very free in her conversation, 
that Huxter presently learnt what was the illness which was 
evidently preying upon little Fan, and what had been Pen’s be- 
havior regarding her. Mrs. Bolton’s account of the transaction 
was not, it may be imagined, entirely an impartial narrative. 
One would have thought from her story that the young gentle- 
man had employed a course of the most persevering and flagi- 
tious artifices to win the girl’s heart, had broken the most solemn 
promises made to her, and was a wretch to be hated and chas- 
tised by every champion of woman. Huxter, in his present 
frame of mind respecting Arthur, and suffering under the latter’s 
contumely, was ready, of course, to take all for granted that was 
said in the disfavor of this unfortunate convalescent. But why 
did he not write home to Clavering, as he had done previously, 
giving an account of Pen’s misconduct, and of the particulars 
regarding it, which had now come to his knowledge ? He once, 
in a letter to his brother-in-law, announced that that nice young 
man, Mr. Pendennis, had escaped narrowly from a fever, and 
that no doubt all Clavering, where he was so popular, would be 
pleased at his recovery; and he mentioned that he had an 
interesting case of compound fracture, an officer of distinction, 
which kept him in town ; but as for Fanny Bolton, he made no 
more mention of her in his letters — no more than Pen himself 
had made mention of her. O you mothers at home, how much 
do you think you know about your lads ? How much do you 
think you know ? 

But with Bows, there was no reason why Huxter should not 
speak his mind, and so, a very short time after his conversation 
with Mrs. Bolton, Mr. Sam talked to the musician about his 
early acquaintance with Pendennis ; described him as a con- 
founded conceited blackguard, and expressed a determination 
to punch his impudent head as soon as ever he should be well 
enough to stand up like a ; man. 

Then it was that Bows on his part spoke, and told his ver- 
sion of the story, whereof Arthur and little Fan were the hero 
and heroine ; how they had met by no contrivance of the 
former, but by a blunder of the old Irishman, now in bed with 
a broken shin — how Pen had acted with manliness and self* 


PENDENNIS. 


568 

control in the business — how Mrs. Bolton was an idiot ; and 
he related the conversation which he, Bows, had had with Pen, 
and the sentiments uttered by the young man. Perhaps Bows’s 
story caused some twinges of conscience in the breast of Pen’s 
accuser, and that gentleman frankly owned that he had been 
wrong with regard to Arthur, and withdrew his project for 
punching Mr. Pendennis’s head. 

But the cessation of his hostility for Pen did not diminish 
Huxter’s attentions to Fanny, which unlucky Mr. Bows marked 
with his usual jealousy and bitterness of spirit. “ I have but 
to like anybody,” the old fellow thought, “ and somebody is 
sure to be preferred to me. It has been the same ill luck with 
me since I was a lad, until now that I am sixty years old. 
What can I expect better than to be laughed at ? It is for the 
young to succeed, and to be happy, and not for old fools like 
me. I’ve played a second fiddle all through life,” he said, with 
a bitter laugh ; “how can I suppose the luck is to change after 
it has gone against me so long ? ” This was the selfish way in 
which Bows looked at the state of affairs : though few persons 
would have thought there was any cause for his jealousy, who 
looked at the pale and grief-stricken countenance of the hapless 
little girl, its object. Fanny received Huxter’s good-natured 
efforts at consolation and kind attentions kindly. She laughed 
now and again at his jokes and games with her little sisters, 
but relapsed quickly into a dejection which ought to have 
satisfied Mr. Bows that the new-comer had no place in her 
heart as yet, had jealous Mr. Bows been enabled to see with 
clear eyes. 

But Bows did not. Fanny attributed Pen’s silence some- 
how to Bow’s interference. Fanny hated him. Fanny treated 
Bows with constant cruelty and injustice. She turned from 
him when he spoke — she loathed his attempts at consolation. 
A hard life had Mr. Bows and a cruel return for his regard. 

When Warrington came to Shepherd’s Inn as Pen’s ambas- 
sador, it was for Mr. Bows’s apartments he inquired (no doubt 
upon a previous agreement with the principal for whom he acted 
in this delicate negotiation), and he did not so much as catch 
a glimpse of Miss Fanny when he stopped at the inn-gate and 
made his inquiry. Warrington was, of course, directed to the 
musician’s chambers, and found him tending the patient there, 
from whose chamber he came out to wait upon his guest. We 
have said that they had been previously known to one another, 
and the pair shook hands with sufficient cordiality. After a 


PENDENNIS. 


569 

little preliminary talk, Warrington said that he had come from 
his friend Arthur Pendennis, and from his family, to thank 
Bows for his attention at the commencement of Pen’s illness, 
and for his kindness in hastening into the country to fetch the 
Major. 

Bows replied that it was but his duty : he had never thought 
to have seen the young gentleman alive again when he went in 
search of Pen’s relatives, and he was very glad of Mr. Pen- 
dennis’s recovery, and that he had his friends with him. “ Lucky 
are they who have friends, Mr. Warrington,” said the musician. 
“ I might be up in this garret and nobody would care for me, 
or mind whether I was alive or dead.” 

“ What ! not the General, Mr. Bows ? ” Warrington asked. 

“ The General likes his whiskey-bottle more than anything 
in life,” the other answered ; “ we live together from habit and 
convenience ; and he cares for me no more than you do. What 
is it you want to ask me, Mr. Warrington ? You ain’t come to 
visit me, I know very well. Nobody comes to visit me. It is 
about Fanny, the porter’s daughter, you are come — I see that 
very well. Is Mr. Pendennis, now he has got well, anxious to 
see her again ? Does his lordship the Sultan propose to throw 
his ’ankerchief to her ? She has been very ill, sir, ever since 
the day when Mrs. Pendennis turned her out of doors — kind of 
a lady, wasn’t it ? The poor girl and myself found the young 
gentleman raving in a fever, knowing nobody, with nobody to 
tend him but his drunken laundress — she watched day and 
night by him. I set off to fetch his uncle. Mamma comes and 
turns Fanny to the right about. Uncle comes and leaves me 
to pay the cab. Carry my compliments to the ladies and 
gentleman, and say we are both very thankful, very. Why, a 
countess couldn’t have behaved better ; and for an apothecary’s 
lady, as I’m given to understand Mrs. Pendennis was — I’m 
sure her behavior is most uncommon aristocratic and genteel. 
She ought to have a double gilt pestle and mortar to her 
coach.” 

It was from Mr. Huxter that Bows had learned Pen’s 
parentage, no doubt, and if he took Pen’s part against the 
young surgeon, and Fanny’s against Mr. Pendennis, it was be- 
cause the old gentleman was in so savage a mood, that his 
humor was to contradict everybody. 

Warrington was curious, and not ill-pleased at the musician’s 
taunts and irascibility. “ I never heard of these transactions,” 
he said, “ or got but a very imperfect account of them from 
Major Pendennis. What was a lady to do ? I think (I have 


PENDENNIS. 


570 

never spoken with her on the subject) she had some notion that 
the young woman and my friend Pen were on — on terms of — 
of an intimacy which Mrs. Pendennis could not, of course, 
recognize — ” 

“ Oh, of course not, sir. Speak out, sir ; say what you 
mean at once, that the young gentleman of the Temple had 
made a victim of the girl of the Shepherd’s Inn, eh ? And so 
she was to be turned out of doors — or brayed alive in the 
double gilt pestle and mortar, by Jove! No, Mr. Warrington, 
there was no such thing : there was no victimizing, or if there 
was, Mr. Arthur was the victim, not the girl. He is an honest 
fellow, he is, though he is conceited, and a puppy sometimes. 
He can feel like a man, and run away from temptation like a 
man. I own it, though I suffer by it, I own it. He has a 
heart, he has : but the girl hasn’t, sir. That girl will do any- 
thing to win a man, and fling him away without a pang, sir. If 
she’s flung away herself, sir, she’ll feel it and cry. She had a 
fever when Mrs. Pendennis* turned her out of doors ; and she 
made love to the Doctor, Doctor Goodenough, who came to 
cure her. Now she has taken on with another chap — another 
sawbones, ha, ha ! d — it, sir, she likes the pestle and mortar, 
and hangs round the pill boxes, she’s so fond of ’em, and she 
has got a fellow from Saint Bartholomew’s, who grins through 
a horse-collar for her sisters, and charms away her melancholy. 
Go and see, sir : very likely he’s in the lodge now. If you want 
news about Miss Fanny, you must ask at the Doctor’s shop, 
sir, not of an old fiddler like me — Good-by, sir. There’s mj 
patient calling.” 

And a voice was heard from the Captain’s bedroom, a well 
known voice, which said, “ I’d loike a dthrop of dthrink, Bows, 
I’m thirstee.” And not sorry, perhaps, to hear that such waa 
the state of things, and that Pen’s forsaken was consoling her- 
self, Warrington took his leave of the irascible musician. 

As luck would have it, he passed the lodge door just as Mr. 
Huxter was in the act of frightening the children with the mask 
whereof we have spoken, and Fanny was smiling languidly at 
his farces. Warrington laughed bitterly. “ Are all women like 
that ? ” he thought. “ I think there’s one that’s not,” he 
added, with a sigh. 

At Piccadilly, waiting for the Richmond omnibus, George 
fell in with Major Pendennis, bound in the same direction, and 
he told the old gentleman of what he had seen and heard 
respecting Fanny. 

Major Pendennis was highly delighted : and as might be 


PENDENNIS. 


57 * 


expected of such a philosopher, made precisely the same 
observation as that which had escaped from Warrington. “ All 
women are the same,” he said. “ La petite se console. Daymy, 
when I used to read ‘ Telemaque ’ at school, Calypso ne pouvait 
se consoler , — you know the rest Warrington, — I used to say it 
was absurd. Absurd, by Gad, and so it is. And so she’s got 
a new soupirant , has she, the little porteress ? Dayvlish nice 
little girl. How mad Pen will be — eh, Warrington ? But we 
must break it to him gently, or he’ll be in such a rage that he 
will be going after her again. We must menager the young 
fellow. 

“ I think Mrs. Pendennis ought to know that Pen acted very 
well in the business. She evidently thinks him guilty, and 
according to Mr. Bows, Arthur behaved like a good fellow,” 
Warrington said. 

“ My dear Warrington,” said the Major, with a look of some 
alarm. “ In Mrs. Pendennis’s agitated state of health and that 
sort of thing, the best way, I think, is not to say a single word 
about the subject — or, stay, leave it to me : and I’ll talk to her 
— break it to her gently, you know, and that sort of thing. I 
give you my word I will. And so Calypso’s consoled, is she ? ” 
And he sniggered over this gratifying truth, happy in the corner 
of the omnibus during the rest of the journey. 

Pen was very anxious to hear from his envoy what had been 
the result of the latter’s mission ; and as soon as the two young 
men could be alone, the ambassador spoke in reply to Arthur’s 
eager queries. 

• “ You remember your poem, Pen, of ‘Ariadne in Naxos,’” 
Warrington said ; “ devilish bad poetry it was, to be sure.” 

“ Apres ? ” asked Pen, in a great state of excitement. 

“ When Theseus left Ariadne, do you remember what hap- 
pened to her, young fellow ? ” 

“It’s a lie, it’s a lie ! You don’t mean that!” cried out 
Pen, starting up, his face turning red. 

“ Sit down, stoopid,” Warrington said, and with two fingers 
pushed Pen back into his seat again. “ It’s better for you as 
it is, young one,” he said sadly, in reply to the savage flush in 
Arthur’s face. 


572 


PENDENNIS . 


CHAPTER LVI. 

FOREIGN GROUND. 

Major Pendennis fulfilled his promise to Warrington so 
far as to satisfy his own conscience, and in so far to ease poor 
Helen with regard to her son, as to make her understand that 
all connection between Arthur and the odious little gate-keeper 
was at an end, and that she need have no further anxiety with 
respect to an imprudent attachment or a degrading marriage 
on Pen’s part. And that young fellow’s mind was also relieved 
(after he had recovered the shock to his vanity) by thinking 
that Miss Fanny was not going to die of love for him, and that 
no unpleasant consequences were to be apprehended from the 
luckless and brief connection. 

So the whole party were free to carry into effect their pro- 
jected Continental trip, and Arthur Pendennis, rentier, voy- 
ageant avec Madame Pendennis and Mademoiselle Bell, and 
George Warrington, particulier, age de 32 ans, taille 6 pieds 
(Anglais), figure ordinaire, cheveux noirs, barbe idem, &c., 
procured passports from the consul of H. M. the King of the 
Belgians at Dover, and passed over from that port to Ostend, 
whence the, party took their way leisurely, visiting Bruges and 
Ghent on their way to Brussels and the Rhine. It is not otir 
purpose to describe this oft-travelled tour, or Laura’s delight 
at the tranquil and ancient cities which she saw for the first 
time, or Helen’s wonder and interest at the Beguine convents 
which they visited, or the almost terror with which she saw the 
black-veiled nuns with outstretched arms kneeling before the 
illuminated altars, and beheld the strange pomps and ceremo- 
nials of the Catholic worship. Bare-footed friars in the streets, 
crowned images of Saints and Virgins in the churches before 
which people were bowing down and worshipping, in direct 
defiance, as she held, of the written law ; priests in gorgeous 
robes, or lurking in dark confessionals, theatres opened, and 
people dancing on Sundays ; — all these new sights and manners 
shocked and bewildered the simple country lady ; and when 
the young men after their evening drive or walk returned to 
the widow and her adopted daughter, they found their books of 
devotion on the table, and at their entrance Laura would com- 


PENDENNIS. 


573 

monly cease reading some of the psalms or the sacred pages 
which, of all others, Helen loved. The late events connected 
with her son had cruelly shaken her ; Laura watched with in- 
tense, though hidden anxiety, every movement of her dearest 
friend ; and poor Pen was most constant and affectionate in 
waiting upon his mother, whose wounded bosom yearned with 
love towards him, though there was a secret between them, 
and an anguish or rage almost on the mother’s part, to think 
that she was dispossessed somehow of her son’s heart, or that 
there were recesses in it which she must not or dared not 
enter. She sickened as she thought of the sacred days of boy- 
hood when it had not been so — when her Arthur’s heart had 
no secrets, and she was his all in all : when he poured his hopes 
and pleasures, his childish griefs, vanities, triumphs into her 
willing and tender embrace ; when her home was his nest still ; 
and before fate, selfishness, nature, had driven him forth on 
wayward wings — to range on his own flight — to sing his own 
song — and to seek his own home and his own mate. Watch- 
ing this devouring care and racking disappointment in her 
friend, Laura once said to Helen, “ if Pen had loved me as 
you wished, I should have gained him, but I should have lost 
you, mamma, I know I should ; and I like you to love me best. 
Men do not know what it is to love as we do, I think,” — and 
Helen, sighing, agreed to this portion of the young lady’s 
speech, though she protested against the former part. For my 
part, I suppose Miss Laura was right in both statements, and 
with regard to the latter assertion especially, that it is an old 
and received truism — love is an hour with us : it is all night 
and all day with a woman. Damon has taxes, sermon, parade, 
tailors’ bills, parliamentary duties, and the deuce knows what to 
think of ; Delia has to think about Damon — Damon is the oak 
(or the post), and stands up, and Delia is the ivy or the honey- 
suckle w'hose arms twine about him. Is it not so, Delia ? Is 
it not your nature to creep about his feet and kiss them, to 
twine round his trunk and hang there ; and Damon’s to stand 
like a British man with his hands in his breeches pocket, while 
the pretty fond parasite clings round him ? 

Old Pendennis had only accompanied our friends to the 
water’s edge, and left them on board the boat, giving the chief 
charge of the little expedition to Warrington. Pie himself was 
bound on a brief visit to the house of a great man, a friend of 
his, after which sojourn he proposed to join his sister-in-law at 
the German watering-place, whither the party was bound. 


PENDENNIS . 


574 

The Major himself thought that his long attentions to his sick 
family had earned for him a little relaxation — and though the 
best of the partridges were thinned off, the pheasants were still 
to be shot at Stillbrook, where the noble owner then was ; old 
Pendennis betook himself to that hospitable mansion and dis- 
ported there with great comfort to himself. A royal Duke, 
some foreigners of note, some illustrious statesmen, and some 
pleasant people visited it ; it did the old fellow’s heart good 
to see his name in the “Morning Post” amongst the list of 
the distinguished company which the Marquis of Steyne was 
entertaining at his country-house at Stillbrook. He was a very 
useful and pleasant personage in a country-house. He enter- 
tained the young men with queer little anecdotes and grivoises 
stories on their shooting-parties or in their smoking-room, 
where they laughed at him and with him. He was obsequious 
with the ladies of a morning, in the rooms dedicated to them. 
He walked the new arrivals about the park and gardens, and 
showed them the carte du pays, and where there was the best 
view of the mansion, and where the most favorable point to look 
at the lake : he showed where the timber was to be felled, and 
where the old road went before the new bridge was built, and 
the hill cut down ; and where the place in the wood was where 
old Lord Lynx discovered Sir Phelim O’Neal on his knees 
before her ladyship, &c., &c. ; he called the lodge-keepers and 
gardeners by their names : he knew the number of domestics 
that sat down in the house-keeper’s room, and how many dined 
in the servants’ hall ; he had a word for everybody, and about 
everybody, and a little against everybody. He was invaluable 
in a country-house, in a word : and richly merited and enjoyed 
his vacation after his labors. And perhaps whilst he was thus 
deservedly enjoying himself with his country friends, the Major 
was not ill-pleased at transferring to Warrington the command 
of the family expedition to the Continent, and thus perforce 
keeping him in the service of the ladies, — a servitude which 
George was only too willing to undergo, for his friend’s sake, 
and for that of a society which he found daily more delightful. 
Warrington was a good German scholar, and was willing to 
give Miss Laura lessons in the language, who was very glad to 
improve herself ; though Pen, for his part, was too weak of 
lazy now to resume his German studies. Warrington acted as 
courier and interpreter ; Warrington saw the baggage in and 
out of ships, inns, and carriages, managed the money matters, 
and put the little troop into marching order. Warringtop 
found out where the English church was, and, if Mrs. Pen 


PENDENNIS. 


575 

dennis and Miss Laura were inclined to go thither, walked with 
great decorum along with them. Warrington walked by Mrs. 
Pendennis’s donkey, when that lady went out on her evening 
excursions ; or took carriages for her ; or got “ Galignani ” 
for her ; or devised comfortable seats under the lime-trees for 
her, when the guests paraded after dinner, and the Kursaal 
band at the bath, where our tired friends stopped, performed 
their pleasant music under the trees. Many a fine whiskered 
Prussian or French dandy, come to the bath for the Trente-et- 
quarante” cast glances of longing towards the pretty fresh-col- 
ored English girl who accompanied the pale widow, and would 
have longed to take a turn with her at the galop or the waltz. 
But Laura did not appear in the ballroom, except once or 
twice, when Pen vouchsafed to walk with her ; and as for War- 
rington, that rough diamond had not had the polish of a dan- 
cing-master, and he did not know how to waltz, — though he 
would have liked to learn, if he could have had such a partner 
as Laura — Such a partner ! pshaw, what had a stiff bachelor 
to do with partners and waltzing ? what was he about, dancing 
attendance here ? drinking in sweet pleasure at a risk he knows 
not of what after sadness, and regret, and lonely longing ? 
But yet he stayed on. You would have said he was the widow’s 
son, to watch his constant care and watchfulness of her ; or 
that he was an adventurer, and wanted to marry her fortune, 
or, at any rate, that he wanted some very great treasure or 
benefit from her, — and very likely he did, — for ours, as the 
reader has possibly already discovered, is a Selfish Story, and 
almost every person, according to his nature, more or less gen- 
erous than George, and according to the way of the world as it 
seems to us, is occupied about Number One. So Warrington 
selfishly devoted himself to Helen, who selfishly devoted her- 
self to Pen, who selfishly devoted himself to himself at this 
present period, having no other personages or object to occupy 
him, except, indeed, his mother’s health, which gave him a 
serious and real disquiet ; but though they sat together, they 
did not talk much, and the cloud was always between them. 

Every day Laura looked for Warrington, and received him 
with more frank and eager welcome. He found himself talking 
to her as he didn’t know himself that he could talk. He found 
himself performing acts of gallantry which astounded him after 
the performance : he found himself looking blankly in the glass 
at the crow’s-feet round his eyes, and at some streaks of white 
in his hair, and some intrusive silver bristles, in his grim, blue 
beard. He found himself looking at the young bucks at the 


PENDENNIS. 


576 

bath — at the blonde, tight-waisted German — at the capering 
Frenchmen, with their lacquered mustaches and trim varnished 
boots — at the English dandies, Pen amongst them, with their 
calm domineering air, and insolent languor : and envied each 
one of these some excellence or quality of youth, or good looks, 
which he possessed, and of which Warrington felt the need. 
And every night, as the night came, he quitted the little circle 
with greater reluctance ; and, retiring to his own lodging in 
their neighborhood, felt himself the more lonely and unhappy. 
The widow could not help seeing his attachment. She under- 
stood, now, why Major Pendennis (always a tacit enemy of her 
darling project) had been so eager that Warrington should be 
of their party. Laura frankly owned her great, her enthusi- 
astic, regard for him : and Arthur would make no movement. 
Arthur did not choose to see what was going on : or did not 
care to prevent, or actually encouraged it. She remembered 
his often having said that he could not understand how a man 
proposed to a woman twice. She was in torture — at secret 
feud with her son, of all objects in the world the dearest to her 
- — in doubt, which she dared not express to herself, about Laura 
— averse to Warrington, the good and generous. No wonder 
that the healing waters of Rosenbad did not do her good, or 
that Doctor von Glauber, the bath physician, when he came to 
visit her, found that the poor lady made no progress to recovery. 
Meanwhile Pen got well rapidly; slept with immense persever- 
ance twelve hours out of the twenty-four ; ate huge meals ; and, 
at the end of a couple of months, had almost got back the bodily 
strength and weight which he had possessed before his illness. 

After they had passed some fifteen days at their place of 
rest and refreshment, a letter came from Major Pendennis an- 
nouncing his speedy arrival at Rosenbad, and, soon after the 
letter, the Major himself made his appearance accompanied by 
Morgan his faithful valet, without whom the old gentleman 
could not move. When the Major travelled he wore a jaunty 
and juvenile travelling costume ; to see his back still you would 
have taken him for one of the young fellows whose slim waist 
and youthful appearance Warrington was beginning to envy. 
It was not until the worthy man began to move, that the ob- 
server remarked that Time had weakened his ancient knees, 
and had unkindly interfered to impede the action of the natty 
varnished boots in which the gay old traveller still pinched his 
toes. There were magnates, both of our own country and of 
foreign nations, present that autumn at Rosenbad. The elder 
Pendennis read over the strangers’ list with great gratification 


PENDENNIS. 


577 

on the night of his arrival, was pleased to find several of his 
acquaintances among the great folks, and would have the honoi 
of presenting his nephew to a German Grand Duchess, a Rus- 
sian Princess, and an English Marquis, before many days were 
over: nor was Pen by any means averse to making the acquaint- 
ance of these great personages, having a liking for polite life, 
and all the splendors and amenities belonging to it. That very 
evening the resolute old gentleman, leaning on his nephew’s 
arm, made his appearance in the halls of the Kursaal, and lost 
or won a napoleon or two at the table of Trente-et-quarante. 
He did not play to lose, he said, or to win : but he did as other 
folks did, and betted his napoleon and took his luck as it came. 
He pointed out the Russians and Spaniards gambling for heaps 
of gold, and denounced their eagerness as something sordid 
and barbarous ; an English gentleman should play where the 
fashion is play, but should not elate or depress himself at the 
sport ; and he told how he had seen his friend the Marquis of 
Steyne, when Lord Gaunt, lose eighteen thousand at a sitting, 
and break the bank three nights running at Paris, without ever 
showing the least emotion at his defeat or victory — “ And that’s 
what I call being an English gentleman, Pen, my dear boy,” 
the old gentleman said, warming as he prattled about his recol- 
lections — “ what I call the great manner only remains with us 
and with a few families in France.” And as Russian Prin- 
cesses passed him, whose reputation had long ceased to be 
doubtful, and damaged English ladies, who are constantly 
seen in company of their faithful attendant for the time being 
in these gay haunts of dissipation, the old Major, with eager 
garrulity and mischievous relish, told his nephew wonderful 
particulars regarding the lives of these heroines ; and diverted 
the young man with a thousand scandals. Egad, he felt him- 
self quite young again, he remarked to Pen, as, rouged and 
grinning, her enormous chasseur behind her bearing her shawl, 
the Princess Obstropski smiled and recognized and accosted 
him. He remembered her in ’14 when she was an actress of 
the Paris Boulevard and the Emperor Alexander’s aide-de-camp 
Obstropski (a man of great talents, who knew a good deal about 
the Emperor Paul’s death, and was a devil to play) married her. 
He most courteously and respectfully asked leave to call upon 
the Princess, and to present to her his nephew, Mr. Arthur 
Pendennis ; and he pointed out to the latter a half-dozen of 
other personages whose names were as famous, and whose his- 
tories were as edifying. What would poor Helen have thought, 
could she have heard those tales, or known to what kind of 

37 


PENDENNTS. 


578 

people her brother-in-law was presenting her son ? Only once, 
leaning on Arthur’s arm, she had passed through the room 
where the green tables where prepared for play, and the croak- 
ing croupiers were calling out their fatal words of Rouge gagne 
and Couleur perd. She had shrunk terrified out of the Pande- 
monium, imploring Pen, extorting from him a promise, on his 
word of honor, that he would never play at those tables ; and 
the scene which so frightened the simple widow, only amused 
the worldly old veteran, and made him young again ! He 
could breathe the air cheerfully which stifled her. Her right 
was not his right : his food was her poison. Human creatures 
are constituted thus differently, and with this variety the mar- 
vellous world is peopled. To the credit of Mr. Pen, let it be 
said, that he kept honestly the promise made to his mother, 
and stoutly told his uncle of his intention to abide by it. 

When the Major arrived, his presence somehow cast a damp 
upon at least three of the persons of our little party — upon 
Laura, who had anything but respect for him ; upon Wairington, 
whose manner towards him showed an involuntary haughtiness 
and contempt ; and upon the timid and alarmed widow, who 
dreaded lest he should interfere with her darling, though almost 
desperate, project for her boy. And, indeed, the Major, un- 
known to himself, was the bearer of tidings which were to bring 
about a catastrophe in the affairs of all our friends. 

Pen with his two ladies had apartments in the town of 
Rosenbad ; honest Warrington had lodgings hard by ; the 
Major, on arrival at Rosenbad, had, as befitted his dignity, 
taken up his quarters at one of the great hotels, at the Roman 
Emperor or the Four Seasons, where tu r o or three hundred 
gamblers, pleasure-seekers, or invalids, sat down and over-ate 
themselves daily at the enormous table-d’hote. To this hotel 
Pen went on the morning after the Major’s arrival, dutifully to 
pay his respects to his uncle, and found the latter’s sitting-room 
duly prepared and arranged by Mr. Morgan, with the major’s 
hats brushed, and his coats laid out : his despatch-boxes and 
umbrella-cases, his guide-books, passports, maps, and other 
elaborate necessaries of the English traveller, all as trim and 
ready as they could be in their master’s own room in Jermvn 
Street. Everything was ready, from the medicine-bottle fresh 
filled from the pharmacien’s, down to the old fellow’s prayer- 
book, without which he never travelled, for he made a point of 
appearing at the English church at every place which he 
honored with a stay. “ Everybody did it,” he said ; “ every 
English gentleman did it : ” and this pious man w T ould as soon 


PEND ENNIS. 


579 

have thought of not calling upon the English ambassador in a 
continental town, as of not showing himself at the national 
place of worship. 

The old gentleman had been to take one of the baths for 
which Rosenbad is famous, and which everybody takes, and his 
after-bath toilet was not yet completed when Pen arrived. The 
elder called out to Arthur in a cheery voice from the inner 
apartment, in which he and Morgan were engaged, and the 
valet presently came in, bearing a little packet to Pen’s address 
— Mr. Arthur’s letters and papers, Morgan said, which he had 
brought from Mr. Arthur’s chambers in London, and which 
consisted chiefly of numbers of the “ Pall Mall Gazette,” which 
our friend Mr. Finucane thought his collaborateur would like to 
see. The papers were tied together : the letters in an envelope, 
addressed to Pen, in the last-named gentleman’s handwriting. 

Amongst the .letters there was a little note addressed, as a 
former letter we have heard of had been, to “ Arther Pendennis, 
Esquire,” which Arthur opened with a start and a blush, and 
read with a very keen pang of interest, and sorrow, and regard. 
She had come to Arthur’s house, Fanny Bolton said — and 
found that he was gone — gone away to Germany without ever 
leaving a word for her — or answer to her last letter, in which 
she prayed but for one word of kindness — or the books which 
he had promised her in happier times, before he was ill, and 
which she would like to keep in remembrance of him. She 
said she would not reproach those who had found her at his 
bedside when he was in the fever, and knew nobody, and who 
had turned the poor girl away without a word. She thought 
she should have died, she said, of that, but Doctor Goodenough 
had kindly tended her, and kep her life, when, perhaps, the 
keeping of it was of no good", and she forgave everybody : and 
as for Arthur, she would pray for him forever. And when he 
was so ill, and they cut off his hair, she had made so free as to 
keep one little lock for herself, and that she owned. And might 
she still keep it, or would his mamma order that that should 
be gave up too ? She was willing to obey him in all things, and 
couldn’t but remember that once he was so kind, oh ! so good 
and kind ! to his poor Fanny. 

When Major Pendennis, fresh and smirking from his toilet, 
came out of his bedroom to his sitting-room, he found Arthur, 
with this note before him, and an expression of savage anger 
on his fate, which surprised the elder gentleman. “ What 
news from London, my boy ? ” he rather faintly asked ; “ are 
the duns at you, that you look so glum ? ” 


PENDENNIS, 


580 

“ Do you know anything about this letter, sir ? ” Arthul 
asked. 

“ What letter, my good sir ? ” said the othei dryly, at once 
perceiving what had happened. 

“ You know what I mean — about, about Miss — about Fanny 
Bolton — the poor dear little girl,” Arthur broke out. “ When 
was she in my room ? Was she there when I was delirious — I 
fancied she was — was she ? Who sent her out of my cham- 
bers ? Who intercepted her letters to me ? Who dared to do 
it ? Did you do it, uncle ? ” 

“ It’s not my practice to tamper with gentlemen’s letters, 
or to answer damned impertinent questions,” Major Pendennis 
cried out, in a great tremor of emotion and indignation. 
“ There was a girl in your rooms when I came up at a great 
personal inconvenience, daymy — and to meet with a return of 
this kind for my affection to you, is not pleasant, by Gad, sir — • 
not at all pleasant.” 

“That’s not the question, sir,” Arthur said hotly — “ and — 
and, I beg your pardon, uncle. You were, you always have 
been, most kind to me : but I say again, did you say anything 
harsh to this poor girl ? Did you send her away from me ? ” 

“ I never spoke a word to the girl,” the uncle said, “and I 
never sent her away from you, and know no more about her, 
and wish to know no more about her, than about the man in 
the moon.”' 

“ Then it’s my mother that did it,” Arthur broke out. “ Did 
my mother send that poor child away ? ” 

“ I repeat I know nothing about it, sir,” the elder said 
testily. “ Let’s change the subject, if you please.” 

“ I’ll never forgive the person who did it,” said Arthur, 
bouncing up and seizing his hat. 

“ The Major cried out, “ Stop, Arthur, for God’s sake, 
stop ! ” but before he had uttered his sentence, Arthur had 
rushed out of the room, and at the next minute the Major saw 
him striding rapidly down the street that led towards his home. 

“ Get breakfast ! ” said the old fellow to Morgan, and he 
wagged his head and sighed as he looked out of the window. 
“ Poor Helen — poor soul ! There’ll be a row. I knew there 
would : and begad all the fat’s in the fire.” 

When Pen reached home he only found Warrington in the 
ladies’ drawing-room, waiting their arrival in order to conduct 
them to the place where the little English colony at Rosenbad 
held their Sunday church. Helen and Laura had not appeared 
as yet ; the former was ailing, and her daughter was with her. 


PENDENNIS. 


58i 

Pen’s wrath was so great that he could not defer expressing 
it. He flung Fanny’s letter across the table to his friend. 
‘‘Look there, Warrington,” he said; “she tended me in my 
illness, she rescued me out of the jaws of death, and this is the 
way they have treated the dear little creature. They have kept 
her letters from me ; they have treated me like a child, and 
her like a dog, poor thing ! My mother has done this.” 

“ If she has, you must remember it is your mother,” War- 
rington interposed. 

“ It only makes the crime the greater, because it is she who 
has done it,” Pen answered. “ She ought to have been the 
poor girl’s defender, not her enemy ; she ought to go down on 
her knees and ask pardon of her. I ought ! I will ! I am 
shocked at the cruelty which has been shown her. What ? 
She gave me her all, and this is her return ! She sacrifices 
everything for me, and they spurn her.” 

“Hush!” said Warrington, “they can hear you from the 
next room.” 

“ Hear ? let them hear ! ” Pen cried out, only so much the 
louder. “ Those may overhear my talk who intercept my letters. 
I say this poor girl has been shamefully used, and I wiil do my 
best to right her ; I will.” 

The door of the neighboring room opened, and Laura came 
forth with pale and stern face. She looked at Pen with glances 
from which beamed pride, defiance, aversion. “Arthur, your 
mother is very ill,” she said ; “ it is a pity that you should speak 
so loud as to disturb her.” 

“ It is a pity that I should have been obliged to speak at 
all,” Pen answered. “ And I have more to say before I have 
done.” 

“ I should think what you have to say will hardly be fit for 
me to hear,” Laura said, haughtily. 

“ You are welcome to hear it or not, as you like,” said Mr. 
Pen. “ I shall go in now, and speak to my mother.” 

Laura came rapidly forward, so that she should not be over 
heard by her friend within. “Not now, sir,” she said to Pen. 
“ You may kill her if you do. Your conduct has gone far enough 
to make her wretched.” 

“ What conduct ? ” cried out Pen, in a fury. “ Who dares 
impugn it ? Who dares meddle with me ? Is it you who are 
the instigator of this persecution ? ” 

“ I said before it was a subject of which it did not become 
me to hear or to speak,” Laura said. “ But as for mamma, if 
she had acted otherwise than she did with regard to — to the 


PENDENKIS. 


5S* 

person about whom you seem to take such an interest, it would 
have been I that must have quitted your house, and not that — 
that person.” 

“ By heavens ! this is too much,” Pen cried out, with a vio- 
lent execration. 

“ Perhaps that is what you wished,” Laura said, tossing her 
head up. “No more of this, if you please ; I am not accus- 
tomed to hear such subjects spoken of in such ^language ; ” 
and with a stately curtsey the yourlg lady passed to her friend’s 
room, looking her adversary full in the face as she retreated 
and closed the door upon him. 

Pen was bewildered with wonder, perplexity, fury, at this 
monstrous and unreasonable persecution. He burst out into a 
loud and bitter laugh as Laura quitted him, and with sneers and 
revilings, as a man who jeers under an operation, ridiculed at 
once his own pain and his persecutor’s anger. The laugh, which 
was one of bitter humor, and no unmanly or unkindly expression 
of suffering under most cruel and unmerited torture, was heard 
in the next apartment, as some of his unlucky previous expres- 
sions had been, and, like them, entirely misinterpreted by the 
hearers. It struck like a dagger into the wounded and tender 
heart of Helen ; it pierced Laura, and inflamed the high-spirited 
girl with scorn and anger. “ And it was to this hardened 
libertine,” she thought — “ to this boaster of low intrigues, that I 
had given my heart away. He breaks the most sacred laws,” 
thought Helen. “ He prefers the creature of his passion to his 
own mother ; and when he is upbraided, he laughs, and glories 
in his crime. ‘ She gave me her all,’ I heard him say it,” 
argued the poor woman ; “ and he boasts of it, and laughs, and 
breaks his mother’s heart.” The emotion, the shame, the grief, 
the mortification almost killed her. She felt she should die of 
his unkindness. 

Warrington thought of Laura’s speech — “Perhaps that is 
what you wished.” “ She loves Pen still,” he said. “ It was 
jealousy made her speak.” — “ Come away, Pen. Come away, 
and let us go to church and get calm. You must explain this 
matter to your mother. She does not appear to know the truth : 
nor do you quite, my good fellow. Come away, and let us talk 
about it.” And again he muttered to himself, “ ‘ Perhaps that 
is what you wished.’ Yes, she loves him. Why shouldn’t she 
love him ? Whom else would I have her love ? What can she 
be to me but the dearest and the fairest and the best of 
women ? ” 

So, leaving the women similarly engaged within, the two gentle- 


PENDENNIS. 


583 

men walked away, each occupied with his own thoughts, and 
silent for a considerable space. “ I must set this matter right,” 
thought honest George, “ as she loves him still — I must set his 
mother’s mind right about the other woman.” And with this 
charitable thought, the good fellow began to tell more at large 
what Bows had said to him regarding Miss Bolton’s behavior 
and fickleness, and he described how the girl was no better than 
a light-minded flirt ; and, perhaps, he exaggerated the good' 
humor and contentedness which he had himself, as he thought, 
witnessed in her behavior in the scene with Mr. Huxter. 

Now, all Bows’s statements had been colored by an insane 
jealousy and rage on that old man’s part ; and instead of allay- 
ing Pen’s renascent desire to see his little conquest again, War- 
rington’s accounts inflamed and angered Pendennis, and made 
him more anxious than before to set himself right, as he per- 
sisted in phrasing it, with Fanny. They arrived at the church 
,door presently ; but scarce one word of the service, and not a 
syllable of Mr. Shamble’s sermon, did either of them compre- 
hend, probably — so much was each engaged with his own private 
speculations. The Major came up to them after the service, 
with his well-brushed hat and wig, and his jauntiest, most 
cheerful, air. He complimented them upon being seen at 
church ; again he said that every comme-il-faut person made a 
point of attending the English service abroad ; and he walked 
back with the young men, prattling to them in garrulous good- 
humor, and making bows to his acquaintances as they passed ; 
and thinking innocently that Pen and George were both highly 
delighted by his anecdotes, which they suffered to run on in a 
scornful and silent acquiescence. 

At the time of Mr. Shamble’s sermon (an erratic Anglican 
divine, hired for the season at places of English resort, and 
addicted to debts, drinking, and even to roulette, it was said,) 
Pen, chafing under the persecution which his womankind in- 
flicted upon him, had been meditating a great act of revolt and 
of justice, as he had worked himself up to believe ; and War- 
rington on his part had been thinking that a crisis in his 
affairs had likewise come, and that it was necessary for him to 
break away from a connection which every day made more and 
more wretched and dear to him. Yes, the time was come. He 
took those fatal words, “ Perhaps that is what you wished,” as 
a text for a gloomy homily, which he preached to himself, in 
the dark crypt of his own heart, whilst Mr. Shamble was feebly 
giving utterance to his sermon- 


5 8 4 


PENDENNIS. 


CHAPTER LVII. 

“fairoaks to le t.” 

Our poor widow (with the assistance of her faithful Martha 
of Fairoaks, who laughed and wondered at the German ways, 
and superintended the affairs of the simple household) had 
made a little feast in honor of Major Pendennis’s arrival, of 
which, however, only the Major and his two younger friends 
partook, for Helen sent to say that she was too unwell to dine 
at their table, and Laura bore her company. The Major talked 
for the party, and did not perceive, or choose to perceive, what 
a gloom and silence pervaded the other two sharers of the 
modest dinner. It was evening before Helen and Laura came 
into the sitting-room to join the company there. She came in 
leaning on Laura, with her back to the waning light, so that 
Arthur could not see how pallid and woe-stricken her face was ; 
and as she went up to Pen, whom she had not seen during the 
day, and placed her fond arms on his shoulder and kissed him 
tenderly, Laura left her, and moved away to another part of the 
room. Pen remarked that his mother’s voice and her whole 
frame trembled, her hand was clammy cold as she put it up to 
his forehead, piteously embracing him. The spectacle of her 
misery only added somehow, to the wrath and testiness of the 
young man. He scarcely returned the kiss which the suffering 
lady gave him : and the countenance with which he met the 
appeal of her look was hard and cruel. “ She persecutes me,” 
he thought within himself, “ and she comes to me with the air 
of a martyr.” “ You look very ill, my child,” she said. “ I 
don’t like to see you look in that way.” And she tottered to a 
sofa, still holding one of his passive hands in her thin cold 
clinging fingers. 

“ I have had much to annoy me, mother,” Pen said, with a 
throbbing breast : and as he spoke Helen’s heart began to beat 
so, that she sat almost dead and speechless with terror. 

Warrington, Laura, and Major Pendennis, all remained 
breathless, aware that the storm was about to break. 

“ I have had letters from London,” Arthur continued, “ and 
one that has given me more pain than I ever had in my life. 
It tells me that former letters of mine have been intercepted 
and purloined away from me; — that — that a young creature 


PEND ENNIS . 585 

who has shown the greatest love and care for me, has been 
most cruelly used by — by you, mother.” 

“ For God’s sake stop,” cried out Warrington. “ She’s ill — 
don’t you see she is ill ? ” 

“ Let him go on,” said the widow, faintly. 

“ Let him go on and kill her,” said Laura, rushing up to 
her mother’s side. “ Speak on, sir, and see her die.” 

“It is you who are cruel,” cried Pen, more exasperated and 
more savage, because his own heart, naturally soft and weak, 
revolted indignantly at the injustice of the very suffering which 
was laid at his door. “ It is you who are cruel, who attribute 
all this pain to me : it is you who are cruel with your wicked 
reproaches, your wicked doubts of me, your wicked persecutions 
of those who love me, — yes, those who love me, and who brave 
everything for me, and whom you despise and trample upon 
because they are of lower degree than you. Shall I tell you 
what I will do, — what I am resolved to do, now that I know 
what your conduct has been ? — I will go back to this poor girl 
whom you turned out of my doors, and ask her to come back 
and share my home with me. I’ll defy the pride which perse- 
cutes her, and the pitiless suspicion which insults her and me.” 

“ Do you mean, Pen, that you — ” here the widow, with eager 
eyes and outstretched hands, was breaking out, but Laura 
stopped her : “ Silence, hush, dear mother,” she cried, and the 
widow hushed. Savagely as Pen spoke, she was only too 
eager to hear what more he had to say. “ Go on, Arthur, go 
on, Arthur,” was all she said, almost swooning away as she 
spoke. 

“ By Gad, I say he sha’n’t go on, or I won’t hear him, by 
Gad,” the Major said, trembling too in his wrath. “ If you 
choose, sir, after all we’ve done for you, after all I’ve done for 
you myself, to insult your mother and disgrace your name, by 
allying yourself with a low-born kitchen girl, go and do it, by 
Gad, — but let us, ma’am, have no more to do with him. I wash 
my hands of you, sir, — I wash my hands of you. I’m an old fellow, 
— I ain’t long for this world. I come of as ancient and honor- 
able a family as any in England, and I did hope, before I went 
off the hooks, by Gad, that the fellow that I’d liked, and 
brought up, and nursed through life, by Jove, would do some- 
thing to show me that our name — yes, the name of Pendennis, 
was left undishonored behind us ; but if he won’t, dammy, I 
say, amen. By G — , both my father and my brother Jack were 
the proudest men in England, and I never would have thought 
that there would come this disgrace to my name, — never— -and 


PENDENNIS. 


586 

— and I’m ashamed that it’s Arthur Pendennis.” The old fel- 
low’s voice here broke off into a sob : it was the second time 
that Arthur had brought tears from those wrinkled lids. 

The sound of his breaking voice stayed Pen’s anger in- 
stantly, and he stopped pacing the room, as he had been doing 
until that moment. Laura was by Helen’s sofa; and Warring- 
ton had remained hitherto an almost silent but not uninterested 
spectator of the family storm. As the parties were talking, it 
had grown almost dark ; and after the lull which succeeded the 
passionate outbreak of the Major, George’s deep voice, as it 
here broke trembling into the twilight room, was heard with no 
small emotion by all. 

“ Will you let me tell you something about myself, my kind 
friends ? ” he said, — “ you have been so good to me, ma’am — 
you have been so kind to me, Laura — I hope I may call you so 
sometimes — my dear Pen and I have been such friends — that I 
have long wanted to tell you my story such as it is, and would 
have told it to you earlier but that it is a sad one and contains 
another’s secret. However, it may do good for Arthur to know 
it — it is right that every one here should. It will divert you 
from thinking about a subject which, out of a fatal misconcep- 
tion, has caused a great deal of pain to all of you. May I 
please tell you, Mrs. Pendennis ? ” 

“ Pray speak,” was all Helen said ; and indeed she -was not 
mtfch heeding ; her mind was full of another idea with which 
Pen’s words had supplied her, and she was in a terror of hope 
that what he had hinted might be as she wished. 

George filled himself a bumper of wine and emptied it, and 
began to speak. “ You all of you know how you see me,” he 
said, — “ a man without a desire to make an advance in the 
world : careless about reputation ; and living in a garret and 
from hand to mouth, though I have friends and a name, and I 
dare say capabilities of my own, that would serve me if I had a 
mind. But mind I have none. I shall die in that garret most 
likely, and alone. I nailed myself to that doom in early life. 
Shall I tell you what it was that interested me about Arthur 
years ago, and made me inclined towards him when I first saw 
him ? The men from our college at Oxbridge brought up 
accounts of that early affair with the Chatteris actress, about 
whom Pen has often talked to me since ; and who, but for the 
Major’s generalship, might have been your daughter-in-law, 
ma’am. I can’t see Pen in the dark, but he blushes, I’m sure ; 
and I dare say Miss Bell does ; and my friend Major Pen- 
dennis, I dare say, laughs as he ought to do — for he won. 


PENDENNIS. 


5 8 7 

What would have been Arthur’s lot now had he been tied at 
nineteen . to an illiterate woman older than himself, with no 
qualities in common between them, to make one a companion 
for the other, no equality, no confidence, and no love speedily ? 
What could he have been but most miserable ? And when he 
spoke just now and threatened a similar union, be sure it was 
but a threat occasioned by anger, which you must give me leave 
to say, ma’am, was very natural on his part, for after a generous 
and manly conduct — let me say who know the circumstances 
well — most generous and manly and self-denying (which is rare 
with him), — he has met from some friends of his with a most 
unkind suspicion, and has had to complain of the unfair treat- 
ment of another innocent person, towards whom he and you all 
are under much obligation.” 

The widow was going to get up here, and Warrington, see- 
ing her attempt to rise, said, “ Do I tire you, ma’am ? ” 

“ O no — go on — go on,” said Helen, delighted, and he con- 
tinued. 

“ I liked him, you see, because of that early history of his, 
which had come to my ears in college gossip, and because I 
like a man, if you will pardon me for saying so, Miss Laura, 
who shows that he can have a great unreasonable attachment 
for a woman. That was why we became friends— and are all 
friends here — for always, aren’t we ? ” he added, in a lower 
voice, leaning over to her, “ and Pen has been a great comfort 
and companion to a lonely and unfortunate man. 

“ I am not complaining of my lot, you see ; for no man’s is 
what he would have it ; and up in my garret, where you left the 
flowers, and with my old books and my pipe for a wife, I am 
pretty contented, and only occasionally envy other men, whose 
careers in life are more brilliant, or who can solace their ill 
fortune by what Fate and my own fault has deprived me of — 
the affection of a woman or a child.” Here there came a sigh 
from somewhere near Warrington in the dark, and a hand was 
held out in his direction, which, however, was instantly with- 
drawn, for the prudery of our females is such, that before all 
expression of feeling, or natural kindness and regard, a woman 
is taught to think of herself and the proprieties, and to be 
ready to blush at the very slightest notice ; and checking, as, 
of course, it ought, this spontaneous motion, modesty drew up 
again, kindly friendship shrank back ashamed of itself, and 
Warrington resumed his history. “ My fate is such as I made 
it, and not lucky for me or for others involved in it. 

“ I, too, had an adventure before I went to college ; and 


PENDENNIS. 


588 

there was no one to save me as Major Pendennis saved Pen. 
Pardon me, Miss Laura, if I tell this story before you. It is 
as well that you all of you should hear my confession. Before 
I went to college, as a boy of eighteen, I was at a private tutor’s, 
and there, like Arthur, I became attached, or fancied I was 
attached, to a woman of a much lower degree and a greater age 
than my own. You shrink from me — ” 

“ No, I don’t,” Laura said, and here the hand went out 
resolutely, 'and laid itself in Warrington’s. She had divined 
his story from some previous hints let fall by him, and his first 
words at its commencement. 

“ She was a yeoman’s daughter in the neighborhood,” War- 
rington said, with rather a faltering voice, “ and I fancied — 
what all young men fancy. Her parents knew who my father 
was, and encouraged me, with all sorts of coarse artifices and 
scoundrel flatteries, which I see now, about their house. To 
do her justice, I own she never cared for me, but was forced 
into what happened by the threats and compulsion of her family. 
Would to God that I had not been deceived : but in these 
matters we are deceived because we wish to be so, and I thought 
I loved that poor woman. 

“ What could come of such a marriage ? I found, before 
long, that I was married to a boor. She could not comprehend 
one subject that interested me. Her dullness palled upon me 
till I grew to loathe it. And after sometime of a wretched, fur- 
tive union — I must tell you all — I found letters somewhere (and 
such letters they were !) which showed me that her heart, such 
as it was, had never been mine, but had always belonged to a 
person of her own degree. 

“ At my father’s death, I paid what debts I had contracted 
at College, and settled every shilling which remained to me in 
an annuity upon — upon those who bore my name, on con- 
dition that they should hide themselves away, and not assume 
it. They have kept that condition, as they would break it, for 
more money. If I had earned fame or reputation, that woman 
would have come to claim it : if I had made a name for my- 
self, those who had no right to it would have borne it ; and I 
entered life at twenty, God help me — hopeless and ruined 
beyond remission. I was the boyish victim of vulgar cheats, 
and perhaps, it is only of late I have found out how hard — 
ah, how hard — it is to forgive them. I told you the moral 
before, Pen ; and now I have told you the fable. Beware how 
you marry out of your degree. I was made for a better lot 
than this, I think : but God has awarded me this one — and 


PENDENNIS. 


5^9 

so, you see, it is for me to look on, and see others successful 
and others happy, with a heart that shall be as little bitter as 
possible.” 

“ By Gad, sir,” cried the Major, in high good-humor, k I 
intended you to marry Miss Laura here.” 

“And, by Gad, Master Shallow, I owe you a thous?nd 
pound,” Warrington said. 

“ How d’ye mean a thousand ? it was only a pony, sir,” 
replied the Major simply, at which the other laughed.- 

As for Helen, she was so delighted, that she started up, and 
said, “ God bless you — God for ever bless you, Mr. Warring- 
ton ; ” and kissed both his hands, and ran up to Pen, and fell 
into his arms. 

“ Yes, dearest mother,” he said as he held her to him, and 
with a noble tenderness and emotion, embraced and forgave 
her. “ I am innocent, and my dear, dear mother has done me 
a wrong.” 

“ Oh, yes, my child, I have wronged you, thank God, I 
have wronged you ! ” Helen whispered. “ Come away, Arthur 
— not here — I want to ask my child to forgive me — and — and 
my God, to forgive me ; and to bless you, and love you, my 
son.” 

He led her, tottering, into her room, and closed the door, 
as the three touched spectators of the reconciliation looked on 
in pleased silence. Ever after, ever after, the tender accents of 
that voice faltering sweetly at his ear — the look of the sacred 
eyes beaming with an affection unutterable — the quiver of the 
fond lips smiling mournfully — were remembered by the young 
man. And at his best moments, and at his hours of trial and 
grief, and at his times of success or well-doing, the mother’s 
face looked down upon him, and blessed him with its gaze of 
pity and purity, as he saw it in that night when she yet lingered 
with him ; and when she seemed, ere she quite left him, an 
angel, transfigured and glorified with love — for which love, as 
for the greatest of the bounties and wonders of God’s provision 
for us, let us kneel and thank Our Father. 

The moon had risen by this time ; Arthur recollected well 
afterwards how it lighted up his mother’s sweet pale face. 
Their talk, or his rather, for she scarcely could speak, was more 
tender and confidential than it had been for years before. He 
was the frank and generous boy of her early days and love. He 
told her the story, the mistake regarding which had caused her 
«o much pain — his struggles to fly from temptation, and his 
thankfulness that he had been able to overcome it. He never 


PENDENNIS . 


59 ° 

would do the girl wrong, never ; or wound his own honor or 
his mother’s pure heart. The threat that he would return was 
uttered in a moment of exasperation, of which he repented. 
He never would see her again. But his mother said, Yes he 
should ; and it was she who had been proud and culpable — 
and she would like to give Fanny Bolton something — and she 
begged her dear boy’s pardon for opening the letter — and she 
would write to the young girl, if, — if she had time. Poor thing ! 
was it not natural that she should love her Arthur? And again 
she kissed him, and she blessed him. 

As they were talking the clock struck nine, and Helen re- 
minded him how, when he was a little boy, she used to go up 
to his bedroom at that hour, and hear him say Our Father. 
And once more, oh, once more, the young man fell down at his 
mother’s sacred knees, and sobbed out the prayer which the 
Divine Tenderness uttered for us, and which has been echoed 
for twenty ages since by millions of sinful and humbled men. 
And as he spoke the last words of the supplication, the mother’s 
head fell down on her boy’s, and her arms closed round him, 
and together they repeated the words “ for ever and ever,” and 
“Amen.” 

A little time after, it might have been a quarter of an hour, 
Laura heard Arthur’s voice calling from within “ Laura ! 
Laura ! ” She rushed into the room instantly, and found the 
young man still on his knees, and holding his mother’s hand. 
Helen’s head had sunk back and was quite pale in the moon. 
Pen looked round, scared with a ghastly terror. “ Help, Laura, 
help ! ” he said — “ she’s fainted — she’s — ” 

Laura screamed, and fell by the side of Helen. The shriek 
brought Warrington and Major Pendennis and the servants to 
the room. The sainted woman was dead. The last emotion 
of her soul here was joy, to be henceforth uncheckered and 
eternal. The tender heart beat no more ; it was to have no 
more pangs, no more griefs and trials. Its last throb was love ; 
and Helen’s last breath was benediction. 

The melancholy party bent their way speedily homewards, 
and Helen was laid by her husband’s side at Clavering, in the 
old church where she had prayed so often. For a while Laura 
went to stay with Dr. Portman, who read the service over his 
dear sister departed, amidst his own sobs and those of the little 
congregation which assembled round Helen’s tomb. There 
were not many who cared for her, or who spoke of her when 
gone. Scarcely more than of a nun in a cloister did people 


PENDENNIS. 


59 1 

know of that pious and gentle lady. A few words among the 
cottagers whom her bounty was accustomed to relieve, a little 
talk from house to house at Clavering, where this lady told how 
their neighbor died of a complaint of the heart ; whilst that 
speculated upon the amount of property which the widow had 
left ; and a third wondered whether Arthur would let Fairoaks 
or live in it, and expected that he would not be long getting 
through his property, — this was all, and except with one or two 
who cherished her, the kind soul was forgotten by the next market- 
day. Would you desire that grief for you should last for a few 
more weeks ? and does after-life seem less solitary, provided 
that our names, when we “ go down into silence,” are echoing 
on this side of the grave yet for a little while, and human voices 
are still talking about us ? She was gone, the pure soul, whom 
only two or three loved and knew. The great blank she left 
was in Laura’s heart, to whom her love had been everything, 
and who had now but to worship her memory. “ I am glad 
that she gave me her blessing before she went away,” Warring- 
ton said to Pen ; and as for Arthur, with a humble acknowl- 
edgment and wonder at so much affection, he hardly dared to 
ask Heaven to make him worthy of it though he felt that a 
saint there was interceding for liim. 

All the lady’s affairs were found in perfect order, and her 
little property ready for transmission to her son, in trust for 
whom she held it. Papers in her desk showed that she had 
long been aware of the complaint, one of the heart, under which 
she labored, and knew that it would suddenly remove her : and 
a prayer was found in her handwriting, asking that her end 
might be, as it was, in the arms of her son. 

Laura and Arthur talked over her sayings, all of which the 
former most fondly remembered, to the young man’s shame 
somewhat, who thought how much greater her love had been 
for Helen than his own. He referred himself entirely to Laura 
to know what Helen would have wished should be done ; what 
poor persons she would have liked to relieve ; what legacies or 
remembrances she would have wished to transmit. They 
packed up the vase which Helen in her gratitude had destined 
to Dr. Goodenough, and duly sent it to the kind Doctor ; a 
silver coffee-pot, which she used, was sent off to Dr. Portman ; 
a diamond ring, with her hair, was given with affectionate greet- 
ing to Warrington. 

It must have been a hard day for poor Laura when she 
went over to Fairoaks first, and to the little room which she 
had occupied, and which was hers no more, and to the widow’s 


59 3 


PEN'DE UNIS. 


own blank chamber in which those two had passed so many 
beloved hours. There, of course, were the clothes in the 
wardrobe, the cushion- on which she prayed, the chair at the 
toilette : the glass that was no more to reflect her dear sad 
face. After she had been here awhile, Pen knocked, and led 
her down stairs to the parlor again, and made her drink a little 
wine, and said,' “ God bless you,” as she touched the glass. 
“Nothing shall ever be changed in your room,” he said — “ it 
is always your room — it is always my sister’s room. Shall it 
not be so, Laura ? ” and Laura said, “ Yes ! ” 

Among the widow’s papers was found a packet, marked by 
the widow “ Letters from Laura’s father,” and which Arthur 
gave to her. They were the letters which had passed between 
the cousins in the early days before the marriage of either of 
them. The ink was faded in which they were written : the 
tears dried out that both perhaps had shed over them : the grief 
healed now whose bitterness they chronicled ; the friends 
doubtless united whose parting on earth had caused to both 
pangs so cruel. And Laura learned fully now for the first time 
what the tie was which had bound her so tenderly to Helen ; 
how faithfully her more than mother had cherished her father’s 
memory, how truly she had loved him, how meekly resigned 
him. 

One legacy of his mother’s Pen remembered, of which 
Laura could have no cognizance. It was that wish of Helen’s 
to make some present to Fanny JBolton ; and Pen wrote to her, 
putting his letter under an envelope to Mr. Bows, and request- 
ing that gentleman to read it before he delivered it to Fanny. 
“ Dear Fanny,” Pen said, “ I have to acknowledge two letters 
from you, one of which was delayed in my illness ” (Pen found 
the first letter in his mother’s desk after her decease, and the 
reading it gave him a strange pang), “ and ^o thank you, my 
kind nurse and friend, who watched me so tenderly during my 
fever. And I have to tell you that the last words of my dear 
mother, who is no more, were words of good-will and gratitude 
to you for nursing me : and she said she would have written to 
you, had she had time — that she would like to ask your pardon 
if she had harshly treated you — and that she would beg you to 
show your forgiveness by accepting some token of friendship and 
regard from her.” Pen concluded by saying that his friend, 
George Warrington, Esq., of Lamb Court, Temple, was trustee 
of a little sum of money, of which the interest would be paid to 
her until she became of age, or changed her name, which would 
always be affectionately remembered by her grateful friend, A. 


PENDENNIS. 


593 

Pendennis. The sum was in truth but small, although enough 
to make a little heiress of Fanny Bolton ; whose parents were 
appeased, and whose father said Mr. P. had acted quite as the 
gentleman — though Bows growled out that to plaster a wounded 
heard with a bank-note was an easy kind of sympathy ; and 
poor Fanny felt only too clearly that Pen’s letter was one of 
farewell. 

“ Sending hundred-pound notes to porters’ daughters is all 
dev’lish well,” old Major Pendennis said to his nephew (whom, 
as the proprietor of Fairoaks and the head of the family, he 
now treated with marked deference and civility), “ and as there 
was a little ready money at the bank, and your poor mother 
wished it, there’s perhaps no harm done. But, my good lad, 
I’d have you to remember that you’ve not above five hundred 
a year, though, thanks to me, the world gives you credit for 
being a doosid deal better off ; and, on my knees, I beg you, 
my boy, don’t break into your capital. Stick to it, sir ; don’t 
speculate with it, sir ; keep your land, and don’t borrow on it. 
Tatham tells me that the Chatteris branch of the railway may 
— will almost certainly pass through Chatteris, and if it can be 
brought on this side of the Brawl, sir, and through your fields, 
they’ll be worth a dev’lish deal of money, and your five hundred 
a year will jump up to eight or nine. Whatever it is, keep it, I 
implore you keep it. And I say, Pen, I think you should give 
up living in those dirty chambers in the Temple and get a 
decent lodging. And I should have a man, sir, to wait upon 
me ; and a horse or two in town in the season. All this will 
pretty well swallow up your income, and I know you must live 
close. But remember you have a certain place in society, and 
you can’t afford to cut a poor figure in the world. What are 
you going to do in the winter ? You don’t intend to stay down 
here, or, I suppose, to go on writing for that — what-d’ye-call’em 
— that newspaper ? ” 

“ Warrington and I are going abroad again, sir, for a little, 
and then we shall see what is to be done,” Arthur replied. 

“ And you’ll let Fairoaks, of course. Good school in the 
neighborhood ; cheap country : dev’lish nice place for East 
India colonels, or families wanting to retire. I’ll speak about 
it at the club ; there are lots of fellows at the club want a place 
of that sort.” 

“ I hope Laura will live in it for the winter, at least, and 
will make it her home,” Arthur replied : at which the Major 
pish’d and psha’d, and said that there ought to be fonvents, 
begad, for English ladies, and wished that Miss Bell had not 

38 


PENDENNIS. 


594 

been there to interfere with the arrangements of the family, and 
that she would mope herself to death alone in that place. 

Indeed, it would have been a very dismal abode for poor 
Laura, who was not too happy either in Doctor Portman’s 
household, and in the town where too many things reminded 
her of the dear parent whom she had lost. But old Lady 
Rockminster, who adored her young friend Laura, as soon as 
she read in the paper of her loss, and of her presence in the 
country, rushed over from Baymouth, where the old lady was 
staying, and insisted that Laura should remain six months, 
twelve months, all her life with her ; and to her ladyship’s house, 
Martha from Fairoaks, as fe?nme de chambre , accompanied her 
young mistress. 

Pen and Warrington saw her depart. It was difficult to say 
which of the young men seemed to regard her the most tenderly. 
“ Your cousin is pert and rather vulgar, my dear, but he seems 
to have a good heart,” little Lady Rockminster said, who said 
her say about everybody — “but I like Bluebeard best. Tell 
me, is he touche au cceur t ” 

“Mr. Warrington has been long — engaged,” Laura said, 
dropping her eyes. 

“Nonsense, child! And good heavens, my dear! that’s a 
pretty diamond cross. What do you mean by wearing it in the 
morning ? ” 

“ Arthur — my brother gave it me just now. It was — it was 
— ” She could not finish the sentence. The carriage passed 
over the bridge, and by the dear, dear gate of Fairoaks — home 
no more. 


CHAPTER LVIII. 

OLD FRIENDS. 

It chanced at that great English festival, at which all Lon- 
don takes a holiday upon Epsom Downs, that a great number 
of personages to whom we have been introduced in the course 
of this history, were assembled to see the Derby. In a com- 
fortable open carriage, which had been brought to the ground 
by a pair of horses, might be seen Mrs. Bungay, of Paternoster 
Row, attired like Solomon in all his glory, and having by her 
side modest Mrs. Shandon, for whom, since the commencement 


PENDENNIS. 


595 


of their acquaintance, the worthy publisher’s lady had main- 
tained a steady friendship. Bungay, having recreated himself 
with a copious luncheon, was madly shying at the sticks hard 
by, till the perspiration ran off his bald pate. Shandon was 
shambling about among the drinking-tents and gypsies : Finu- 
cane constant in attendance upon the two ladies, to whom 
gentlemen of their acquaintance, and connected with the pub- 
lishing house, came up to pay a visit. 

Among others, Mr. Archer came up to make her his bow, 
and told Mrs. Bungay who was on the course. Yonder was the 
Prime Minister : his lordship had just told him to back Borax 
for the race ; but Archer thought Muffineer the better horse. 
He pointed out countless dukes and grandees to the delighted 
Mrs. Bungay. “ Look yonder in the Grand Stand,” he said. 
“ There sits the Chinese Ambassador with the Mandarins of 
his suite. Fou-choo-foo brought me over letters of introduction 
from the Governor-General of India, my most intimate friend, 
and I was for some time very kind to him, and he had his chop- 
sticks laid for him at my table whenever he chose to come and 
dine. But he brought his own cook with him, and — would you 
believe it, Mrs. Bungay? — one day, when I was out, and the 
Ambassador was with Mrs. Archer in our garden eating goose- 
berries, of which the Chinese are passionately fond, the beast 
of a cook, seeing my wife’s dear little Blenheim spaniel, (that 
we had from the Duke of Marlborough nimself, whose ances- 
tor’s life Mrs. Archer’s great-great-grandfather saved at the 
battle of Malplaquet,) seized upon the poor little devil, cut his 
throat, and skinned him, and served him up stuffed with forced- 
meat in the second course.” 

“ Law ! ” said Mrs. Bungay. 

“ You may fancy my wife’s agony when she knew what had 
happened. The cook came screaming up stairs, and told us 
that she had found poor Fido’s skin in the area, just after we 
had all tasted of the dish ! She never would speak to the Am- 
bassador again — never ; and, upon my word, he has never been 
to dine with us since. The Lord Mayor, who did me the honor 
to dine, liked the dish very much ; and, eaten with green peas, 
it tastes rather like duck.” 

“You don’t say so, now ! ” cried the astonished publisher’s 
lady. 

“ Fact, upon my word. Look at that lady in blue, seated 
by the Ambassador : that is Lady Flamingo, and they say she 
is going to be married to him, and return to Pekin with his 
Excellency. She is getting her feet squeezed down on purpose. 


PENDENNIS. 


596 

But she’ll only cripple herself, and will never be able to do it— 
never. My wife has the smallest foot in England, and wears 
shoes for a six-years-old child ; but what is that to a Chinese 
lady’s foot, Mrs. Bungay ? ” 

“Who is that carriage as Mr. Pendennis is with, Mr. 
Archer ? ” Mrs. Bungay presently asked. “ He and Mr. War- 
rington were here jest now. He’s ’aughty in his manners, that 
Mr. Pendennis, and well he may be, for I’m told he keeps tip. 
top company. ’As he ‘ad a large fortune left him, Mr. Archer ? 
He’s in black still, I see.” 

“ Eighteen hundred a year in land, and twenty-two thousand 
five hundred in Three-and-a-half per Cents. ; that’s about it,” 
said Mr. Archer. 

“ Law ! why you know everything, Mr. A. ! ” cried the lady 
of Paternoster Row. 

“ I happen to know, because I was called in about poor 
Mrs. Pendennis’s will,” Mr. Archer replied. “ Pendennis’s uncle, 
the Major, seldom does anything without me ; and as he is 
likely to be extravagant we’ve tied up the property, so that 
he can’t make ducks-and-drakes with it. — How do you do, my 
lord ? — Do you know that gentleman, ladies ? You have read 
his speeches in the House ; it is Lord Rochester.” 

“ Lord Fiddlestick,” cried out Finucane, from the box. 
“Sure it’s Tom Staples, of the ‘Morning Advertiser,’ Archer.” 

“ Is it ? ” Archer said, simply. “ Well, I’m very short- 
sighted, and upon my word I thought it was Rochester. That 
gentleman with the double opera-glass (another nod) is Lord 
John ; and the tall man with him, don’t you know him? is Sir 
James.” 

“ You know ’em because you see ’em in the House,” growl- 
ed Finucane. 

“I know them because they are kind enough to allow me 
to call them my most intimate friends,” Archer continued. 
“ Look at the Duke of Hampshire ; what a pattern of a fine old 
English gentleman ! He never misses ‘ the Derby.’ ‘ Archer,’ 
he said to me only yesterday, ‘ I have been at sixty-five Der- 
bies ! appeared on the field for the first time on a piebald pony 
when I was seven years old, with my father, the Prince of 
Wales, and Colonel Hanger ; and only missing two races, — one 
when I had the measles at Eton, and one in the Waterloo year, 
when I was with my friend Wellington in Flanders,’ ” 

“ And who is that yellow carriage, with the pink and yellow 
parasols, that Mr. Pendennis is talking to, and ever so many 
gentlemen ? ” asked Mrs. Bungay. 


PENDENNIS. 


597 

44 That is Lady Clavering, of Clavering Park, next estate to 
my friend Pendennis. That is the young son and heir upon 
the box ; he’s awfully tipsy, the little scamp ! and the young 
lady is Miss Amory, Lady Clavering’s daughter by a first mar- 
riage, and uncommonly sweet upon my friend Pendennis ; but 
I’ve reason to think he has his heart fixed elsewhere. You 
have heard of young Mr. Foker — the great brewer Foker, you 
know — he was going to hang himself in consequence of a fatal 
passion for Miss Amory, who refused him, but was cut down 
just in time by his valet, and is now abroad, under a keeper.” 

“How happy that young fellow is ! ” sighed Mrs. Bungay. 
“ Who’d have thought when he came so quiet and demure to 
dine with us, three or four years ago, he would turn out such a 
grand character ! Why, I saw his name at Court the other day, 
and presented by the Marquis of Steyne and all ; and in every 
party of the nobility his name’s down as sure as a gun.” 

“ I introduced him a good deal when he first came up to 
town,” Mr. Archer said, “ and his uncle, Major Pendennis, did 
the rest. Hallo ! There’s Cobden here, of all men in the 
world ! I must go and speak to him. Good-by, Mrs. Bungay. 
Good-morning, Mrs. Shandon.” 

An hour previous to this time, and at a different part of the 
course, there might have been seen an old stage-coach, on the 
battered roof of which a crowd of shabby raffs were stamping 
and hallooing, as the great event of the day — the Derby race — 
rushed over the green sward, and by the shouting millions of 
people assembled to view that magnificent scene. This was 
Wheeler’s (the “ Harlequin’s Head ” ) drag, which had brought 
down a company of choice spirits from Bow Street, with a slap- 
up luncheon in the “ boot.” As the whirling race flashed by, 
each of the choice spirits bellowed out the name of the horse 
or the colors which he thought or he hoped might be foremost. 
“ The Cornet ! ” “ It’s Muffineer ! ” “ It’s blue sleeves ! ” 

“ Yallow cap ! yallow cap ! yallow cap ! ” and so forth, yelled 
the gentlemen sportsmen, during that delicious and thrilling 
minute before the contest was decided ; and as the fluttering 
signal blew out, showing the number of the famous horse 
Podasokus as winner of the race, one of the gentlemen on the 
“ Harlequin’s Head ” drag sprang up off the roof, as if he was 
a pigeon and about to fly away to London or York with the news. 

But his elation did not lift him many inches from his stand- 
ing-place, to which he came down again on the instant, causing 
the boards of the crazy old coach-roof to crack with the weight 
of his joy. “ Hurray, hurray ! ” he bawled out, “ Podasokus is 


PENDENNIS. 


598 

the horse ! Supper for ten, Wheeler, my boy. Ask you all 
round of course, and damn the expense.” 

And the gentlemen on the carriage, the shabby swaggerers, 
the dubious bucks, said, “ Thank you — congratulate you, 
Colonel ; sup with you with pleasure : ” and whispered to one 
another, “ The Colonel stands to win fifteen hundred, and he 
got the odds from a good man, too.” 

And each of the shabby bucks and dusky dandies began to 
eye his neighbor with suspicion, lest that neighbor, taking his 
advantage, should get the Colonel into a lonely place and 
borrow money of him. And the winner on Podasokus could 
not be alone during the whole of that afternoon, so closely did 
his friends watch him and each other. 

At another part of the course you might have seen a vehicle, 
certainly more modest, if not more shabby than that battered 
coach which had brought down the choice spirits from the 
“ Harlequin’s Head ; ” this was cab No. 2002, which had con- 
veyed a gentleman and two ladies from the cab-stand in the 
Strand : whereof one of the ladies, as she sat on the box of 
the cab enjoying with her mamma and their companion a repast 
of lobster-salad and bitter-ale, looked so fresh and pretty that 
many of the splendid young dandies who were strolling about 
the course, and enjoying themselves at the noble diversion of 
Sticks, and talking to the beautifully dressed ladies in the beauti- 
ful carriages on the hill, forsook these fascinations to have a 
glance at the smiling and rosy-cheeked lass on the cab. The 
blushes of youth and good-humor mantled on the girl’s cheeks, 
and played over that fair countenance like the pretty shining 
cloudlets on the serene sky overhead ; the elder lady’s cheek 
was red too ; but that was a permanent mottled rose, deepening 
only as it received fresh draughts of pale-ale and brandy-and- 
water, until her face emulated the rich shell of the lobster 
which she devoured. 

The gentleman who escorted these two ladies was most 
active in attendance upon them : here on the course, as he had 
been during the previous journey. During the whole of that 
animated and delightful drive from London, his jokes had 
never ceased. He spoke up undauntedly to the most awful 
drags full of the biggest and most solemn guardsmen ; as to the 
humblest donkey-chaise in which Bob the dustman was driving 
Molly to the race. He had fired astonishing volleys of what is 
called “ chaff ” into endless windows as he passed ; into lines 
of grinning girls’ schools ; into little regiments of shouting 
urchins hurraying behind the railings of their Classical and 


PENDE A NTS 


599 

Commercial Academies ; into casements whence smiling maid- 
servants, and nurses tossing babies, or demure old maiden 
ladies with dissenting countenances, were looking. And the 
pretty girl in the straw bonnet with pink ribbon, and her 
mamma, the devourer of lobsters, had both agreed that when he 
was in “ spirits ” there was nothing like that Mr. Sam. He 
had crammed the cab with trophies won from the bankrupt 
proprietors of the Sticks hard by, and with countless pin- 
cushions, wooden apples, backy-boxes, Jack-in-the-boxes, and 
little soldiers. He had brought up a gypsy with a tawny child 
in her arms to tell the fortunes of the ladies : and the only 
cloud which momentarily obscured the sunshine of that happy 
party, was when the teller of fate informed the young lady that 
she had had reason to beware of a fair man, who was false to 
her : that she had had a bad illness, and that she would find 
that a dark man would prove true. 

The girl looked very much abashed at this news : her 
mother and the young man interchanged signs of wonder and 
intelligence. Perhaps the conjuror had used the same words 
to a hundred different carriages on that day. 

Making his way solitary amongst the crowd and the car- 
riages, and noting, according to his wont, the various cir- 
cumstances and characters which the animated scene presented, 
a young friend of ours came suddenly upon cab 2002, and the 
little group of persons assembled on the outside of the vehicle. 
As he caught sight of the young lady on the box, she started 
and turned pale : her mother became redder than ever : the 
heretofore gay and triumphant Mr. Sam immediately assumed 
a fierce and suspicious look, and his eyes turned savagely from 
Fanny Bolton (whom the reader, no doubt, has recognized in 
the young lady of the cab) to Arthur Pendennis, advancing to 
meet her. 

Arthur, too, looked dark and suspicious on perceiving Mr. 
Samuel Huxter in company with his old acquaintances : but hi;, 
suspicion was that of alarmed morality, and, I dare say, highly 
creditable to Mr. Arthur ; like the suspicion of Mrs. Lynx, 
when she sees Mr. Brown and Mrs. Jones talking together, or 
when she remarks Mrs. Lamb twice or thrice in a handsome 
opera-box. There may be no harm in the conversation of Air. 
B. and Mrs. J. : and Mrs. Lamb’s opera-box (though she noto- 
riously can’t afford one) may be honestly come by : but yet a 
moralist like Mrs. Lynx has a right to the little precautionary 
fright : and Arthur was no doubt justified in adopting that 
severe demeanor of his. 


6oo 


PENDENNIS . 


Fanny’s heart began to patter violently : Huxter’s fists, 
plunged into the pockets of his paletot, clenched themselves 
involuntarily, and armed themselves, as it were, in ambush • 
Mrs. Bolton began to talk with all her might, and with a wonder- 
ful volubility : and Lor ! she was so ’appy to see Mr. Pendennis, 
and how well he was a lookin’, and we’d been talkin’ about Mr. 
P. only jest before ; hadn’t we, Fanny ? and if this was the 
famous Hepsom races that they talked so much about, she didn’t 
care, for her part, if she never saw them again. And how was 
Major Pendennis, and that kind Mr. Warrington, who brought 
Mr. P.’s great kindness to Fanny ; and she never would forget 
it, never: and Mr. Warrington was so tall, he almost broke his 
’ead up against their lodge door. You recollect Mr. War- 
rington a knockin’ of his head — don’t you, Fanny ? 

Whilst Mrs. Bolton was so discoursing, I wonder how many 
thousands of thoughts passed through Fanny’s mind, and what 
dear times, sad struggles, lonely griefs, and subsequent shame- 
faced consolations were recalled to her? What pangs had the 
poor little thing, as she thought how much she had loved him, 
and that she loved him no more ? There he stood, about whom 
she was going to die ten months since, dandified, supercilious, 
with a black crape to his white hat, and jet buttons in his shirt- 
front : and a pink in his coat, that some one else had probably 
given him : with the tightest lavender-colored gloves sewn with 
black : and the smallest of canes. And Mr. Huxter wore no 
gloves, and great Blucher boots, and smelt very much of tobacco 
certainly ; and looked, oh, it must be owned, he looked as if a 
bucket of water would do him a great deal of good ! All these 
thoughts, and a myriad of others, rushed through Fanny’s mind 
as her mamma was delivering herself of her speech, and as the 
girl, from under her eyes, surveyed Pendennis — surveyed him 
entirely from head to foot, the circle on his white forehead that 
his hat left when he lifted it (his beautiful, beautiful: hair had 
grown again), the trinkets at his watch-chain, the ring on his 
hand under his glove, the neat shining boot, so, so unlike Sam’s 
high-low ! — and after her hand had given a little twittering 
pressure to the lavender-colored kid grasp which was held out 
to it, and after her mother had delivered herself of her speech, 
all Fanny could find to say was, — “ This is Mr. Samuel Huxter 
whom you knew formerly I believe, sir ; Mr. Samuel, you know 
you knew Mr. Pendennis formerly — and — and, will you take a 
little refreshment ? ” 

These little words, tremulous and uncolored as they were, 
yet were understood by Pendennis in such a manner as to take 



MR. ARTHUR AND MR. SAMUEL, 





' 
































, 













PEND ENNIS. 


601 


a great load of suspicion from off his mind — of remorse, perhaps, 
from his heart. The frown on the countenance of the prince 
of Fairoaks disappeared, and a good-natured smile and a know- 
ing twinkle of the eyes illuminated his highness’s countenance. 
“ I am very thirsty,” he said, “ and I will be glad to drink your 
health, Fanny; and I hope Mr. Huxter will pardon me for 
having been very rude to him the last time we met, and when I 
was so ill and out of spirits, that indeed I scarcely knew what 
I said.” And herewith the lavender-colored dexter kid-glove 
was handed out, in token of amity, to Huxter. 

The dirty fist in the young surgeon’s pocket was obliged to 
undouble itself, and come out of its ambush disarmed. The 
poor fellow himself felt, as he laid it in Pen’s hand, how hot 
his own was, and how black — it left black marks on Pen’s 
gloves ; he saw them, — he would have liked to have clenched 
it again and dashed it into the other’s good-humored face ; and 
have seen, there upon that ground, with Fanny, with all Eng- 
land looking on, which was the best man — he Sam Huxter of 
Bartholomew’s, or that grinning dandy. 

Pen, with ineffable good-humor, took a glass — he didn’t 
mind what it was — he was content to drink after the ladies ; 
and he filled it with frothing lukewarm beer, which he pro- 
nounced to be delicious, and which he drank cordially to the 
health of the party. 

As he was drinking and talking on in an engaging manner, 
a young lady in a short dove-colored dress, with a white para- 
sol lined with pink, and the prettiest dove-colored boots that 
ever stepped, passed by Pen, leaning on the arm of a stalwart 
gentleman with a military mustache. 

The young lady clenched her little fist, and gave a mischiev- 
ous side-look as she passed Pen. He of the mustaches burst 
out into a jolly laugh. He had taken off his hat to the ladies 
of cab No. 2002. You should have seen Fanny Bolton’s eyes 
watching after the dove-colored young lady! Immediately 
Huxter perceived the direction which they took, they ceased 
looking after the dove-colored nymph, and they turned and 
looked into Sam Huxter’s orbs with, the most artless good- 
humored expression. 

“What a beautiful creature!” Fanny said. “What a 
lovely dress ! Did you remark, Mr. Sam, such little, little 
hands ? ” 

“ It was Capting Strong,” said Mrs. Bolton : “ and who was 
the young woman, I wonder ? ” 

“A neighbor of mine in the country — Miss Amory,” Arthur 


602 


PENDENNIS. 


said, — “ Lady Clavering’s daughter. You’ve seen Sir Francis 
often in Shepherd’s Inn, Mrs. Bolton.” 

As he spoke, Fanny built up a perfect romance in three 
volumes — love — faithlessness • — splendid marriage at St. 
Georges Hanover Square — broken-hearted maid — and Sam 
Huxter was not the hero of that story — poor Sam, who by this 
time had got out an exceedingly rank Cuba cigar, and was 
smoking it uyler Fanny’s little nose. 

After that confounded prig Pendennis joined and left the 
party, the sun was less bright to Sam Huxter, the sky less blue 
— the Sticks had no attraction for him — the bitter-beer was hot 
and undrinkable — the world was changed. He had a quantity 
of peas and a tin pea-shooter in the pocket of the cab for 
amusement on the homeward route. He didn’t take them out, 
and forgot their existence until some other wag, on their return 
from the races, fired a volley into Sam’s sad face ; upon which 
salute, after a few oaths indicative of surprise, he burst into a 
savage and sardonic laugh. 

But Fanny was charming all the way home. She coaxed, 
and snuggled, and smiled. She laughed pretty laughs ; she 
admired everything : she took out the darling little Jack-in-the- 
boxes, and was so obliged to Sam. And when they got home, 
and Mr. Huxter, still with darkness on his countenance, was 
taking a frigid leave of her — she burst into tears, and said he 
was a naughty unkind thing. 

Upon which, with a burst of emotion almost as emphatic as 
hers, the young surgeon held the girl in his arms — swore that 
she was an angel, and that he was a jealous brute ; owned that 
he was unworthy of her, and that he had no right to hate Pen- 
dennis; and asked her, implored her, to say once more that she — 

That she what ? — The end of the question and Fanny’s 
answer were pronounced by lips that were so near each other, 
that no bystander could hear the words. Mrs. Bolton only 
said, “ Come, come, Mr. H. — no nonsense, if you please ; and 
I think you’ve acted like a wicked wretch, and been most un- 
common cruel to Fanny, that I do.” 

When Arthur left No. 2002, he went to pay his respects to 
the carriage to which, and to the side of her mamma, the dove- 
colored author of Mes Larmes had by this time returned. In- 
defatigable old Major Pendennis was in waiting upon Lady 
Clavering, and had occupied the back seat in her carriage ; the 
box being in possession of young Hopeful, under the care of 
Captain Strong. 


PENDENNIS. 


603 

A numDer or dandies, and men of certain fashion — of mili- 
tary bucks, of young rakes of the public offices, of those who 
may be styled men’s men rather than ladies’ — had come about 
the carriage during its station on the hill — and had exchanged 
a word or two with Lady Clavering, and a little talk (a little 
“ chaff ” some of the most elegant of the men styled their con- 
versation) with Miss Amory. They had offered her sportive 
bets, and exchanged with her all sorts of free-talk and knowing 
inuendoes. They pointed out to her who was on the course : 
and the “ who ” was not always the person a young lady should 
know. 

When Pen came up to Lady Clavering’s carriage, he had to 
push his way through a crowd of these young bucks who were 
paying their court to Miss Amory, in order to arrive as near 
that young lady, who beckoned him by many pretty signals to 
her side. 

“ Je l’ai vue,” she said ; “ elle a de bien beaux yeux ; vous 
etes un monstre ! ” 

“Why monster?” said Pen, with a laugh; “ Honi soit qui 
mal y pense. My young friend, yonder, is as well protected as 
any young lady in Christendom. She has her mamma on one 
side, her pretendu on the other. Could any harm happen to a 
girl between those two ? ” 

“ One does not know what may or may not arrive,” said 
Miss Blanche, in French, “when a girl has the mind, and when 
she is pursued by a wicked monster like you. Figure to your- 
self, Colonel, that I come to find Monsieur, your nephew, near 
to a cab, by two ladies, and a man, oh, such a man! and who 
ate lobsters, and who laughed, who laughed ! ” 

“ It did not strike me that the man laughed,” Pen said. 
“ And as for lobsters, I thought he would have liked to eat me 
after the lobsters. He shook hands with me, and griped me 
so, that he bruised my glove black and blue. He is a young 
surgeon. He comes from Clavering. Don’t you remember the 
gilt pestle and mortar in High Street ? ” 

“ If he attends you when you are sick,” continued Miss 
Amory, “ he will kill you. He will serve you right ; for you are 
a monster.” 

The perpetual recurrence to the word “ monster ” jarred 
upon Pen. “ She speaks about these matters a greal deal too 
lightly,” he thought. “ If I had been a monster, as she calls it, 
she would have received me just the same. This is not the 
way in which an English lady should speak or think. Laura 
would not speak in that way, thank God ; ” and as he thought 
so, his own countenance fell. 


604 


PENDENNIS . 


“ Of wriat are you thinking ? Are you going to bonder me 
at present?” Blanche asked. “Major, scold your mechani 
nephew. He does not amuse me at all. He is as bete as 
Captain Crackenbury.” 

“ What are you saying about me, Miss Amory ? ” said the 
guardsman, with a grin. “ If it’s anything good, say it in Eng- 
lish, for I don’t understand French when it’s spoke so devilish 
quick.” 

“ It ain't anything good, Crack,” said Crackenbury’s fellow, 
Captain Clinker. “ Let’s come away, and don’t spoil sport. 
They say Pendennis is sweet upon her.” 

“ I’m told he’s a devilish clever fellow,” sighed Cracken- 
bury. “ Lady Violet Lebas says he’s a devilish clever fellow. 
He wrote a work, or a poem, or something ; and he writes 
those devilish clever things in the — in the papers, you know. 
Dammy, I wish / was a clever fellow, Clinker.” 

“ That’s past wishing for, Crack, my boy,” the other said. 
“ I can’t write a good book, but I think I can make a pretty 
good one on the Derby. What a flat Clavering is ! And the 
Begum ! I like that old Begum. She’s worth ten of her 
daughter. How pleased the old girl was at winning the lot- 
tery ! ” 

“ Clavering’s safe to pay up, ain’t he ? ” asked Captain 
Crackenbury. 

“ I hope so,” said his friend ; and they disappeared, to en- 
joy themselves amongst the Sticks. 

Before the end of the day’s amusements, many more gentle- 
men of Lady Clavering’s acquaintance came up to her carriage, 
and chatted with the party which it contained. The worthy 
lady was in high spirits and good-humor, laughing and talking 
according to her wont, and offering refreshments to all her 
friends, until her ample baskets and bottles were emptied, and 
her servants and postilions were in such a royal state of ex- 
citement as servants and postilions commonly are upon the 
Derby day. 

The Major remarked that some of the visitors to the car- 
riage appeared to look with rather queer and meaning glances 
towards its owner. “How easily she takes it!” one man 
whispered to another. “ The Begum’s made of money,” the 
friend replied. “ How easily she takes what ? ” thought old 
Pendennis. Has anybody lost any money?” Lady Claver- 
ing said she was happy in the morning because Sir Francis had 
promised her not to bet. 

Mr. Welbore, the country neighbor of the Claverings, was 


PENDENNIS . 


605 

passing the carriage, when he was called back by the Begum, 
who rallied him for wishing to cut her. “ Why didn’t he come 
before ? Why didn’t he come to lunch ? ” Her ladyship was 
i;i great delight, she told him — she told everybody, that she 
had won five pounds in a lottery. As she conveyed this piece 
of intelligence to ffim, Mr. Welbore looked so particularly 
knowing, and withal melancholy, that a dismal apprehension 
seized upon Major Pendennis. “ He would go and look after 
the horses and those rascals of postilions, who were so long in 
coming round.” When he came back to the carriage, his 
usually benign and smirking countenance was obscured by some 
sorrow. What is the matter with you now ? ” the good-natured 
Begum asked. The Major pretended a headache from the 
fatigue and sunshine of the day. The carriage wheeled off the 
course and took its way Londonwards, not the least brilliant 
equipage in that vast and picturesque procession. The tipsy 
drivers dashed gallantly over the turf, amidst the admiration of 
foot-passengers, the ironical cheers of the little donkey-carriages 
and spring vans, and the loud objurgations of horse-and-chaise 
men, with whom the reckless post-boys came in contact. The 
jolly Begum looked the picture of good-humor as she reclined 
on her splendid cushions ; the lovely Sylphide smiled with 
languid elegance. Many an honest holiday-maker with his 
family wadded into a tax-cart, many a cheap dandy working his 
way home on his weary hack, admired that brilliant turn-out, 
and thought, no doubt, how happy those “ swells ” must be. 
Strong sat on the box still, with a lordly voice calling to the 
post-boys and the crowd. Master Frank had been put inside 
of the carriage and was asleep there by the side of the Major, 
dozing away the effects of the constant luncheon and champagne 
of which he had freely partaken. 

The Major was revolving in his mind meanwhile the news 
the receipt of which had made him so grave. “ If Sir Francis 
Clavering goes on in this way, Pendennis the elder thought 
this little tipsy rascal will be as bankrupt as his father and 
grandfather before him. The Begum’s fortune can’t stand 
such drains upon it : no fortune can stand them : she has paid 
his debts half-a-dozen times already. A few years more of 
the turf, and a few coups like this will ruin her.” 

Don’t you think we could get up races at. Clavering, 
mamma?” Miss Amory asked. “Yes, we must have them 
there again. There were races there in the old times, the 
good old times. It’s a national amusement, you know : and we 
could have a Clavering ball : and we might have dances for 


6o6 


PENDENNIS. 


the tenantry, and rustic sports in the park — Oh, it would be 
charming.” 

“ Capital fun,” said mamma. “ Wouldn’t it Major ? ” 

“ The turf is a very expensive amusement, my dear lady/' 
Major Pendennis answered, with such a rueful face, that the 
Begum rallied him, and asked laughingly whether he had lost 
money on the race ? 

After a slumber of about an hour and a half, the heir of the 
house began to exhibit symptoms of wakefulness, stretching his 
youthful arms over the Major’s face, and kicking his sister’s 
knees as she sat opposite to him. When the amiable youth 
was quite restored to consciousness, he began a sprightly con- 
versation. 

“ I say, ma,” he said, “ I’ve gone and done it this time, I 
have.” 

“What have you gone and done, Franky, dear?” asked 
mamma. 

“ How much is seventeen half-crowns ? Two pound and 
half-a-crown, ain’t it? I drew Borax in our lottery, but I 
bought Podasokus and Man-milliner of Leggat minor for two 
open tarts and a bottle of gingerbeer.” 

“You little wicked gambling creature, how dare you begin 
so soon ? ” cried Miss Amory. 

“ Hold your tongue if you please. Who ever asked your 
leave, miss ? ” the brother said. “ And I say, ma — ” 

“ Well, Franky, dear ? ” 

“You’ll tip me all the same, you know, when I go back — ” 
and here he broke out into a laugh. “ I say, ma, shall I tell 
you something ? ” 

The Begum expressed her desire to hear this something, 
and her son and heir continued : — 

“ When me and Strong was down at the grand stand after 
the race, and I was talking to Leggat minor, who was there with 
his governor, I saw pa look as savage as a bear. And I say, 
ma, Leggat minor told me that he heard his governor say that 
pa had lost seven thousand backing the favorite. I’ll never 
back the ravorite when I’m of age. No, no — hang me if I do : 
leave me alone, Strong, will you ? ” 

“ Captain Strong ! Captain Strong ! is this true ? ” cried out 
the unfortunate Begum. “ Has Sir Francis been betting again ? 
He promised me he wouldn’t. He gave me his word of honor 
he wouldn’t.” 

Strong, from his place on the box, had overheard the end of 
young Clavering’s communication, and was trying in vain to 
stop his unlucky tongue. 


PENDENNIS. 


607 

“ I’m afraid it’s true, ma’am,” he said, turning round. “ I 
deplore the loss as much as you can. He promised me as he 
promised you ; but the play is too strong for him ! he can’t re 
frain from it.” 

Lady Clavering at this sad news burst into a fit of tears. 
She deplored her wretched fate as the most miserable of women. 
She declared she would separate, and pay no more debts for 
this ungrateful man. She narrated with tearful volubility a 
score of stories only too authentic, which showed how her hus- 
band had deceived, and how constantly she had befriended 
him : and in this melancholy condition, whilst young Hopeful 
was thinking about the two guineas which he himself had won ; 
and the Major revolving, in his darkened mind, whether certain 
plans which he had been forming had better not be abandoned ; 
the splendid carriage drove up at length to the Begum’s house 
in Grosvenor Place ; the idlers and boys lingering about the 
place to witness, according to public wont, the close of the 
Derby Day, and cheering the carriage as it drew up, and envy- 
ing the happy folks who descended from it. 

“ And it’s for the son of this man that I am made a beg- 
gar!” Blanche said, quivering with anger, as she walked up 
stairs leaning on the Major’s arm — “ for this cheat — for this 
black-leg — for this liar — for this robber of women.” 

“ Calm yourself, my dear Miss Blanche,” the old gentleman 
said ; “ I pray calm yourself. You have been hardly treated, 
most unjustly. But remember that you have always a friend in 
me ; and trust to an old fellow who will try and serve you.” 

And the young lady, and the heir of the hopeful house of 
Clavering, having retired to their beds, the remaining three of 
the Epsom party remained for some time in deep consulta 
tion. 


CHAPTER LIX. 

EXPLANATIONS. 

Almost a year, as the reader will perceive, has passed since 
an event described a few pages back. Arthur’s black coat is 
about to be exchanged for a blue one. His person has under- 
gone other more pleasing and remarkable changes. His wig 
has been laid aside, and his hair, though somewhat thinner, has 


6o8 


PENDENNIS. 


returned to public view. And he has had the honor of appear 
ing at Court in the uniform of a Cornet of the Clavering troop 

of the -shire Yeomanry Cavalry, being presented to the 

Sovereign by the Marquis of Steyne. 

This was a measure strongly and pathetically urged by 
Arthur’s uncle. The Major would not hear of a year passing 
before this ceremony of gentlemanhood was gone through. 
The old gentleman thought that his nephew should belong to 
some rather more select Club than the Polyanthus ; and has 
announced everywhere in the world his disappointment that 
the young man’s property has turned out not by any means 
as well as he could have hoped, and is under fifteen hundred a 
year. 

That is the amount at which Pendennis’s property is set 
down in the world — where his publishers begin to respect him 
much more than formerly, and where even mammas are by no 
means uncivil to him. For if the pretty daughters are, natur- 
ally, to marry people of very different expectations — at any 
rate, he will be eligible for the plain ones : and if the brilliant 
and fascinating Mira is to hook an Earl, poor little Beatrice, 
who has one shoulder higher than the other, must hang on to 
some boor through life, and why should not Mr. Pendennis be 
her support ? In the' very first winter after the accession to 
his mother’s fortune, Mrs. Hawxby in a country-house caused 
her Beatrice to learn billiards from Mr. Pendennis, and would 
be driven by nobody but him in the pony-carriage, because he 
was literary and her Beatrice was literary too, and declared that 
the young man, under the instigation of his horrid old uncle, 
had behaved most infamously in trifling with Beatrice’s feelings. 
The truth is the old gentleman, who knew Mrs. Hawxby’s char- 
acter, and how desperately that lady would practise upon un^ 
wary young men, had come to the country-house in question and 
carried Arthur out. of the danger of her immediate claws, though 
not out of the reach of her tongue. The. elder Pendennis 
would have had his nephew pass a part of the Christmas at 
Clavering, whither the. family had returned ; but Arthur had 
not the heart for that. Clave ring was too near poor old Fair- 
oaks ; and that was too full of sad recollections for the young 
man. 

We have lost sight of the Claverings, too, until their re- 
appearance upon the Epsom race-ground, and must give a brief 
account of them in the interval. During the past year, the 
world has not treated any member of the Clavering family very 
kindly. Lady Clavering, one of the best-natured women that 


PENDENNIS. 


ever enjoyed a good dinner, or made a slip m grammar, has had 
her appetite and good-nature sadly tried by constant family 
grievances, and disputes such as make the efforts of the best 
French cook unpalatable, and the most delicately-stuffed sofa- 
cushion hard to lie on. “I’d rather have a turnip, Strong, for 
dessert, than that pine-apple, and all them Muscatel grapes, 
from Clavering,” says poor Lady Clavering, looking at her 
dinner-table, and confiding her griefs to her faithful friend, “ if 
I could but have a little quiet to eat it with. Oh, how much 
happier I was when I was a widow, and before all this money 
fell in to me ! ” 

The Clavering family had indeed made a false start in life, 
and had got neither comfort, nor position, nor thanks for the 
hospitalities which they administered, nor a return of kindness 
from the people whom they entertained. The success of their 
first London season was doubtful ; and their failure afterwards 
notorious. “ Human patience was not great enough to put up 
with Sir Francis Clavering,” people said. “ He was too hope- 
lessly low, dull, and disreputable. You could not say what, 
but there was a taint about the house and its entourages. Who 
was the Begum, with her money, and without her h’s, and 
where did she come from ? What an extraordinary little piece 
of conceit the daughter was, with her Gallicised graces and 
daring affectations, not fit for well-bred English girls to asso- 
ciate with ! What strange people were those they assembled 
round about them ! Sir Francis Clavering was a gambler, 
living notoriously in the society of black-legs and profligates. 
Hely Clinker, who was in his regiment, said that he not only 
cheated at cards, but showed the white feather. What could 
Lady Rockminster have meant by taking her up ? ” After the 
first season, indeed, Lady Rockminster, who had taken up Lady 
Clavering, put her down ; the great ladies would not take their 
daughters to her parties : the young men who attended them 
behaved with the most odious freedom and scornful familiarity ; 
and poor Lady Clavering herself avowed that she was obliged 
to take what she called “ the canal ” into her parlor, because 
the tiptops wouldn’t come. 

She had not the slightest ill-will towards “the canal,” the 
poor dear lady, or any pride about herself, or idea that she was 
better than her neighbor ; but she had taken implicitly the 
orders which on her entry into the world her social godmother 
had given her: she had been willing to know whom they knew, 
and ask whom they asked. The “canal,” in fact, was much 
pleasanter than what is called “ society ; ” but, as we said be- 

39 


6io 


FEND ENNIS. 


fore, that to leave a mistress is easy, while, on the contrary, to 
be left by her is cruel ; so you may give up society without any 
great pang, or anything but a sensation of relief at the parting ; 
but severe are the mortifications and pains you have if society 
gives up you. 

One young man of fashion we have mentioned, who at least 
it might have been expected would have been found faithful 
amongst the faithless, and Harry Foker, Esq. was indeed that 
young man. But he had not managed matters with prudence; 
and the unhappy passion at first confided to Pen, became no- 
torious and ridiculous to the town, was carried to the ears of 
his weak and fond mother, and finally brought under the cog- 
nizance of the bald-headed and inflexible Foker senior. 

When Mr. Foker learned this disagreeable news, there took 
place between him and his son a violent and painful scene which 
ended in the poor little gentleman’s banishment from England 
for a year, with a positive order to return at the expiration of 
that time and complete his marriage with his cousin ; or to re- 
tire into private life and three hundred a year altogether, and 
never see parent or brewery more. Mr. Henry Foker went 
away then, carrying with him that grief and care which passes 
free at the strictest Custom-houses, and which proverbially ac- 
companies the exile, and with this crape over his eyes, even the 
Parisian Boulevard looked melancholy to . him, and the sky of 
Italy black. 

To Sir Francis Clavering, that year was a most unfortunate 
one. The events described in the last chapter came to com- 
plete the ruin of the year. It was that year of grace in which, 
as our sporting readers may remember, Lord Harrowhill’s 
horse (he was a classical young nobleman, and named his 
stud out of the Iliad) — when Podasokus won the “ Derby,” to 
the dismay of the knowing ones, who pronounced the winning 
horse’s name in various extraordinary ways, and who backed 
Borax, who was nowhere in the race. Sir Francis Clavering, 
who was intimate with some of the most rascally characters of 
the turf, and, of course, had valuable “information,” had laid 
heavy odds against the winning horse, and backed the favorite 
freely, and the result of his dealings was, as his son correctly 
stated to poor Lady Clavering, a loss of seven thousand 
pounds. 

Indeed, it was a cruel blow upon the lady, who had dis- 
charged her husband’s debts many times over : who had re- 
ceived as many times his oaths and promises of amend- 
ment ; who had paid his money-lenders and horse-dealers ; 


PENDENNIS. 


6ll 


who had furnished his town and country houses, and who was 
called upon now instantly to meet this enormous sum, the pen- 
alty of her cowardly husband’s extravagance. 

It has been described in former pages how the elder Pen- 
dennis had become the adviser of the Clavering family, and, in 
his quality of intimate friend of the house, had gone over every 
room of it, and even seen that ugly closet which we all of us 
have, and in which, according to the proverb, the family skeleton 
is locked up. About the Baronet’s pecuniary matters, if the 
Major did not know, it was because Clavering himself did not 
know them, and hid them from himself and others in such a 
hopeless entanglement of lies, that it was impossible for adviser 
or attorney or principal to get an accurate knowledge of his 
affairs. But, concerning Lady Clavering, the Major was much 
better informed ; and when the unlucky mishap of the “ Derby” 
arose, he took upon himself to become completely and thor- 
oughly acquainted with all her means, whatsoever they were ; 
and was now accurately informed of the vast and repeated 
sacrifices which the widow Amory had made in behalf of her 
present husband. 

He did not conceal, — and he had won no small favor from 
Miss Blanche by avowing it, — his opinion, that Lady Clavering’s 
daughter had been hardly treated at the expense of her son, by 
her second marriage : and in his conversations with Lady 
Clavering had fairly hinted that he thought Miss Blanche 
ought to have a better provision. We have said that he had 
already given the widow to understand that he knew all the 
particulars of her early and unfortunate history, having been 
in India at the time when — when the painful circumstances 
occurred which had ended in her parting from her first hus- 
band. He could tell her where to find the Calcutta newspaper 
which contained the account of Amory’s trial, and he showed, 
and the Begum was not a little grateful to him for his forbear- 
ance, how, being aware all along of this mishap which had 
befallen her, he had kept all knowledge of it to himself, and 
been constantly the friend of her family. 

“ Interested motives, my dear Lady Clavering,” he said, 
“ of course I may have had. We all have interested motives, 
and mine, I don’t conceal from you, was to make a marriage 
between my nephew and your daughter.” To which Lady 
Clavering, perhaps with some surprise that the Major should 
choose her family for a union with his own, said she was quite 
willing to consent. 

But frankly he said, “ My dear lady, my boy has but five 


6l2 


PENDENNIS. 


hundred a year, and a wife with ten thousand pounds to her 
fortune would scarcely better him. We could do better for 
him than that, permit me to say ; and he is a shrewd cautious 
young fellow who has sown his wild oats now — who has very 
good parts and plenty of ambition — and whose object in marry- 
ing is to better himself. If you and Sir Francis chose — and 
Sir Francis, take my word for it, will refuse you nothing-— 
you could put Arthur in a way to advance very considerably in 
the world, and show the stuff which he has in him. Of what 
use is that seat in Parliament to Clavering, who scarcely ever 
shows his face in the House, or speaks a word there ? I’m 
told by gentlemen who heard my boy at Oxbridge, that he was 
famous as an orator, begad ! — and once put his foot into the 
stirrup and mount him, I’ve no doubt he won’t be the last of 
the field, ma’am. I’ve tested the chap, and know him pretty 
well, I think. He is much too lazy, and careless, and flighty a 
fellow, to make a jog-trot journey, and arrive, as your lawyers 
do, at the end of their lives ! but give him a start and good 
friends, and an opportunity, and take my word for it, he’ll 
make himself a name that his sons shall be proud of. I don’t 
see any way for a fellow like him to parvenir , but by making a 
prudent marriage — not with a beggarly heiress — to sit down 
for life upon a miserable fifteen hundred a year — but with 
somebody whom he can help, and who can help him forward in 
the world, and whom he can give a good name and a station 
in the country, begad, in return for the advantages which she 
brings him. It would be better for you to have a distinguished 
son-in-law, than to keep your husband on in Parliament, who’s 
of no good to himself or to anybody else there, and that’s, I 
say, why I’ve been interested about you, and offer you what I 
think a good bargain for both.” 

“You know I look upon Arthur as one of the family almost 
now,” said the good-natured Begum ; “ he comes and goes 
when he likes ; and the more I think of his dear mother, the 
more I see there’s few people so good — none so good to me. 
And I’m sure I cried when I heard of her death, and would 
have gone into mourning for her myself, only black don’t 
become me. And I know who his mother wanted him to 
marry — Laura, I mean — whom old Lady Rockminster has 
taken such a fancy to, and no wonder. She’s a better girl 
than my girl. I know both. And my Betsy — Blanche, I mean 
— ain’t been a comfort to me, Major. It’s Laura Pen ought to 
marry.” 

“ Marry on five hundred a year ! My dear good soul, you 


PENDENNIS. 


613 

are mad ! ” Major Pendermis said. “ Think over what I 
have said to you. Do nothing in your affairs with that unhappy 
husband of yours without consulting me ; and remember that 
old Pendennis is always your friend.” 

For some time previous, Pen’s uncle had held similar lan- 
guage to Miss Amory. He had pointed out to her the con- 
venience of the match which he had at heart, and was bound 
to say, that mutual convenience was of all things the very best 
in the world to marry upon — the only thing. “ Look at your 
love-marriages, my dear young creature. The love-match 
people are the most notorious of all for quarrelling afterwards ; 
and a girl who runs away with Jack to Gretna Green, constantly 
runs away with Tom to Switzerland afterwards. The great 
point in marriage is for people to agree to be useful to one 
another. The lady brings the means, and the gentleman avails 
himself of them. My boy’s wife brings the horse, and begad 
Pen goes in and wins the plate. That’s what I call a sensible 
union. A couple like that have something to talk to each 
other about when they come together. If you had Cupid him- 
self to talk to — if Blanche and Pen were Cupid and Psyche^ 
begad — they’d begin to yawn after a few evenings, if they had 
nothing but sentiment to speak on.” 

As for Miss Amory, she was contented enough with Pen as 
long as there was nobody better. And how many other young 
ladies are like her ? — and how many love-marriages carry on well 
to the last? — and how many sentimental firms do not finish in 
bankruptcy? — and how many heroic passions don’t dwindle 
down into despicable indifference, or end in shameful defeat ? 

These views of life and philosophy the Major was constantly, 
according to his custom, inculcating on Pen, whose mind was 
such that he could seethe right on both sides of many questions, 
and, comprehending the sentimental life which was quite out of 
the reach of the honest Major’s intelligence, could understand 
the practical life too, and accommodate himself, or think he 
could accommodate himself, to it. So it came to pass that 
during the spring succeeding his mother’s death he was a good 
deal under the influence of his uncle’s advice, and domesticated 
in Lady Clavering’s house ; and in a measure was accepted by 
Miss Amory without being a suitor, and was received without 
being engaged. The young people were extremely familiar, 
without being particularly sentimental, and met and parted with 
each other in perfect good-humor. “And I,” thought Pen* 
dennis, “ am the fellow who eight years ago had a grand passion, 
and last year was raging in a fever about Briseis ! ” 


614 


PENDENNIS, 


Yes, it was the same Pendennis, and time had brought to 
him, as to the rest of us, its ordinary consequences, consolations, 
developments. We alter very little. When we talk of this man 
or that woman being no longer the same person whom we 
remember in youth, and remark (of course to deplore) changes 
in our friends, we don’t perhaps, calculate that circumstance 
only brings out the latent defect or quality, and does not create 
it. The selfish languor and indifference of to-day’s possession 
is the consequence of the selfish ardor of yesterday’s pursuit : 
the scorn and weariness which cries vanitas vanitatum is but the 
lassitude of the sick appetite palled with pleasure : the insolence 
of the successful parvenu is only the necessary continuance of 
the career of the needy struggler : our mental changes are like 
our gray hairs or our wrinkles — but the fulfilment of the plan of 
mortal growth and decay : that which is snow-white now was 
glossy black once ; that which is sluggish obesity to-day was 
boisterous rosy health a few years back ; that calm weariness, 
benevolent, resigned, and disappointed, was ambition, fierce and 
violent, but a few years since, and has only settled into sub- 
missive repose after many a battle and defeat. Lucky he who 
can bear his failure so generously, and give up his broken sword 
to Fate the Conqueror with a manly and humble heart ! Are 
you not awe-stricken, you, friendly reader, who, taking the page 
up for a moment’s light reading, lay it down, perchance, for a 
graver reflection, — to think how you, who have consummated your 
success or your disaster, may be holding marked station, or a 
hopeless and nameless place, in the crowd — who have passed 
through how many struggles of defeat, success, crime, remorse, 
to yourself only known ! — who may have loved and grown cold, 
wept and laughed again, how often ! — to think how you are the 
same You , whom in childhood you remember, before the voyage 
of life began ? It has been prosperous, and you are riding into 
port, the people huzzaing and the guns saluting, — and the lucky 
captain bows from the ship’s side, and there is a care under the 
star on his breast which nobody knows of : or you are wrecked, 
and lashed, hopeless, to a solitary spar out at sea : — the sinking 
man and the successful one are thinking each about home, very 
likely, and remembering the time when they were children ; 
alone on the hopeless spar, drowning out of sight ; alone in 
the midst of the crowd applauding you. 


PEND ENNIS 


615 


CHAPTER LX. 

CONVERSATIONS. 

Our good-natured Begum was at first so much enraged at 
this last instance of her husband’s duplicity and folly, that she 
refused to give Sir Francis Clavering any aid in order to meet 
his debts of honor, and declared that she would separate from 
him, and leave him to the consequences of his incorrigible weak' 
ness and waste. After that fatal day’s transactions at the Der- 
by, the unlucky gambler was in such a condition of mind that 
he was disposed to avoid everybody ; alike his turf-associates 
with whom he had made debts which he trembled lest he should 
not have the means of paying, and his wife, his long-suffering 
banker, on whom he reasonably doubted whether he should be 
allowed any longer to draw. When Lady Clavering asked the 
next morning whether Sir Francis was in the house, she received 
answer that he had not returned that night, but had sent a mes- 
senger to his valet, ordering him to forward clothes and letters 
by the bearer. Strong knew that he should have a visit or a 
message from him in the course of that or the subsequent day, 
and accordingly got a note beseeching him to call upon his dis- 
tracted friend F. C. at Short’s Hotel, Blackfriars, and ask for 
Mr. Francis there. For the Baronet was a gentleman of that 
peculiarity of mind that he would rather tell a lie than not, and 
always began a contest with fortune by running away and hiding 
himself. The Boots of Mr. Short’s establishment, who carried 
Clavering’s message to Grosvenor Place, and brought back his 
carpet-bag, was instantly aware who was the owner of the bag, 
and he imparted his information to the footman who was laying 
the breakfast-table, who carried down the news to the servants’ 
hall, who took it to Mrs. Bonner, my lady’s house-keeper and 
confidential maid, who carried it to my lady. And thus every 
single person in the Grosvenor Place establishment knew that 
Sir Francis was in hiding, under the name of Francis, at an inn 
in the Blackfriars Road. And Sir Francis’s coachman told the 
news to other gentlemen’s coachmen, who carried it to their 
masters, and to the neighboring Tattersall’s, where very gloomy 
anticipations were formed that Sir Francis Clavering was about 
to make a tour in the Levant. 


6i6 


PENDENNIS. 


In the course of that day the number of letters addressed to 
Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., which found their way to his hall 
table, was quite remarkable. The French cook sent in his 
account to my lady ; the tradesmen who supplied her ladyship’s 
table, and Messrs. Finer and Gimcrack, the mercers and or- 
namental dealers, and Madame Crinoline, the eminent milliner, 
also forwarded their little bills to her ladyship, in company with 
Miss Amory’s private, and by no means inconsiderable, account 
at each establishment. 

In the afternoon of the day after the Derby, when Strong 
(after a colloquy with his principal at Short’s Hotel, whom he 
found crying and drinking Curaqoa) called to transact business 
according fo his custom at Grosvenor Place, he found all 
these suspicious documents ranged in the Baronet’s study ; and 
began to open them and examine them with a rueful counte- 
nance. 

Mrs. Bonner, my lady’s maid and housekeeper, came down 
upon him whilst engaged in this occupation. Mrs. Bonner, a 
part of the family and as necessary to her mistress as the 
Chevalier was to Sir Francis, was of course on Lady Claver- 
ing’s side in the dispute between her and her husband, and as 
by duty bound even more angry than her ladyship herself. 

“ She won’t pay, if she takes my advice,” Mrs. Bonner said. 
“ You’ll please to go back to Sir Francis, Captain — and he lurk- 
ing about in a low public-house and don’t dare to face his wife 
like a man ! — and say that we won’t pay his debts no longer. 
We made a man of him, we took him out of jail (and other folks 
too perhaps), we’ve paid his debts over and over again — we set 
him up in Parliament and gave him a house in town and 
country, and where he don’t dare show his face, the shabby 
sneak ! We’ve given him the horse he rides and the dinner he 
eats and the very clothes he has on his back ; and we will give 
him no more. Our fortune, such as is left of it, is left to our- 
selves, and we wont waste any more of it on this ungrateful 
man. We’ll give him enough to live upon and leave him, that’s 
what we’ll do : and that’s what you may tell him from Susan 
Bonner.” 

Susan Bonner’s mistress hearing of Strong’s arrival sent 
for him at this juncture, and the Chevalier went up to her lady- 
ship not without hopes that he should find her more tractable 
than her factotum Mrs. Bonner. Many a time before had he 
pleaded his client’s cause with Lady Clavering and caused her 
good-nature to relent. He tried again once more. He painted 
in dismal colors the situation in which he had found Sir Fran- 


PENDENNIS. 


617 

cis : and would not answer for any consequences which might 
ensue if he could not find means of meeting his engagements. 

“ Kill hisself,” laughed Mrs. Bonner, “ kill hisself, will he ? 
Dying’s the best thing he could do.” Strong vowed that he 
had found him with the razors on the table ; but at this, in her 
turn, Lady Clavering laughed bitterly. “ He’ll do himself no 
harm, as long as there’s a shilling left of which he can rob a 
poor woman. His life’s quite safe, Captain : you may depend 
upon that. Ah ! it was a bad day that ever I set eyes on 
him.” 

“ He’s worse than the first man,” cried out my lady’s aide- 
de-camp. “ He was a man, he was — a wild devil, but he had 
the courage of a man — whereas this fellow — what’s the use of 
my lady paying his bills, and selling her diamonds, and for- 
giving him ? He’ll be as bad again next year. The very next 
chance he has he’ll be a cheating of her, and robbing of her ; 
and her money will go to keep a pack of rogues and swindlers 
—1 don’t mean you, Captain — you’ve been a good friend to us 
enough, bating we wish we’d never set eyes on you.” 

The Chevalier saw from the words which Mrs. Bonner had 
let slip regarding the diamonds, that the kind Begum was dis- 
posed to relent once more at least, and that there were hopes 
still for' his principal. 

“ Upon my word, ma’am,” he said, with a real feeling of 
sympathy for Lady Clavering’s troubles, and admiration for 
her untiring good-nature, and with a show of enthusiasm which 
advanced not a little his graceless patron’s cause — “ anything 
you say against Clavering, or Mrs. Bonner here cries out against 
me, is no better than we deserve, both of us, and it was an 
unlucky day for you when you saw either. He has behaved 
cruelly to you : and if you were not the most generous and for- 
giving woman in the world, I know there would be no chance 
for him. But you can’t let the father of your son be a dis- 
graced man, and send little Frank into the world with such a 
stain upon him. Tie him down ; bind him by any promises 
you like : I vouch for him that he will subscribe them.” 

“ And break ’em,” said Mrs. Bonner. 

“ And keep ’em this time,” cried out Strong. “ He must 
keep them. If you could have seen how he wept, ma’am ! ‘ Oh, 
Strong,’ he said to me, ‘ it’s not for myself I feel now : it’s for 
the best woman in England, whom I have treated basely — I 
know I have.’ He didn’t intend to bet upon this race, ma’am 
— indeed he didn’t. He was cheated into it : ail the ring was 
taken in. He thought he might make the bet quite safely, 


6i8 


PENDENNIS. 


without the least risk. And it will be a lesson to him for all 
his life long. To see a man cry — Oh, it’s dreadful.” 

“ He don’t think much of making my dear Missus cry,” 
said Mrs. Bonner — “ poor dear soul ! — look if he does, Cap- 
tain.” 

“ If you’ve the soul of a man** Clavering,” Strong said to his 
principal, when he recounted this scene to him, “you’ll keep 
your promise this time : and, so help me Heaven ! if you break 
word with her, I’ll turn against you and tell all.” 

“What, all?” cried Mr. Francis, to whom his ambassador 
brought the news back at Short’s Hotel, where Strong found 
the Baronet crying and drinking Cura^oa. 

“ Psha ! Do you suppose I am a fool ? ” burst out Strong. 
“ Do you suppose I could have lived so long in the world, 
Frank Clavering, without having my eyes about me ? You 
know I have but to speak and you are a beggar to-morrow. 
And I am not the only man who knows your secret.” 

“ Who else does ? ” gasped Clavering. 

“ Old Pendennis does, or I am very much mistaken. He 
recognized the man the first night he saw him, when he came 
drunk into your house.” 

“ He knows it, does he ? ” shrieked out Clavering. “ Damn 
him — kill him.” 

“You’d like to kill us all, wouldn’t you, old boy?” said 
Strong, with a sneer, puffing his cigar. 

The Baronet dashed his weak hand against his forehead ; per- 
haps the other had interpreted his wish rightly. “ Oh Strong ! ” 
he cried, “ if I dared, I’d put an end to myself, for I’m the 

d est miserable dog in all England. It’s that that makes 

me so wild and reckless. Fts that which makes me take 
to drink (and he drank, with a trembling hand, a bumper of 
his fortifier — the Cura9oa), and to iive about with these thieves. 

I know they’re thieves, every one of ’em, d d thieves. And 

— and how can I help it ? — and I didn’t know it, you know — and, 

by Gad, I’m innocent — and until I saw the d d scoundrel first, 

I knew no more about it than the dead — and I’ll fly, and I’ll 
go abroad out of the reach of the confounded hells, and I’ll 
bury myself in a forest, by Gad ! and hang myself up to a tree 
— and, oh — I’m the most miserable beggar in all England ! ” 
And so with more tears, shreiks, and curses, the impotent wretch 
vented his grief and deplored his unhappy fate ; and, in the 
midst of groans and despair and blasphemy, vowed his miser- 
able repentance. 


PENDENNIS. 


The honored proverb which declares that to be an ill wind 
which blows good to nobody, was verified in the case of Sif 
Francis Clavering, and another of the occupants of Mr. Strong’s 
chambers in Shepherd’s Inn. The man was “good,” by a lucky 
hap, with whom Colonel Altamont made his bet ; and on the 
settling day of the Derby — as Captain Clinker, who was ap- 
pointed to settle Sir Francis Clavering’s book for him (for Lady 
Clavering, by the advice of Major Pendennis, would not allow’ 
the Baronet to liquidate his own money transactions), paid over 
the notes to the Baronet’s many creditors — Colonel Altamont 
had the satisfaction of receiving the odds of thirty to one in 
fifties, which he had taken against the winning horse of the 
day. 

Numbers of. the Colonel’s friends were present on the oc- 
casion to congratulate him on his luck — all Altamont’s own 
set and the gents who met in the private parlor of the convivial 
Wheeler, my host of the “ Harlequin’s Head,” came to witness 
their comrade’s good fortune, and would have liked, with a gen- 
erous sympathy for success, to share in it. “Now was the 
time,” Tom Diver had suggested to the Colonel, “to have up 
the specie ship that was sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, with the 
three hundred and eighty thousand dollars on board, besides 
bars and doubloons.” “ The Tredyddlums were very low — to 
be bought for an old song — never was such an opportunity for 
buying shares,” Mr. Keightley insinuated ; and Jack Holt 
pressed forward his tobacco-smuggling scheme, the audacity of 
which pleased the Colonel more than any other of the spec- 
ulations proposed to him. Then of the “ Harlequin’s Head ” 
boys: there was Jack Rackstraw, who knew of a pair of horses 
which the Colonel must buy ; Tom Fleet, whose satirical paper, 
“ The Swell,” wanted but two hundred pounds of capital to be 
worth a thousand a year to any man — “ with such a power and 
influence, Colonel, you rogue, and the entrke of all the green- 
rooms in London,” Tom urged ; whilst little Moss Abrams en- 
treated the Colonel not to listen to the absurd fellows with 
their humbugging speculations, but to invest his money in some 
good bills which Moss could get for him, and which would re- 
turn him fifty per cent, as safe as the Bank of England. 

Each and all of these worthies came round the Colonel with 
their various blandishments ; but he had courage enough to re- 
sist them, and to button up his notes in the pocket of his coat, 
and go home to Strong and “ sport ” the outer door of the 
chambers. Honest Strong had given his fellow-lodger good 
advice about all his acquaintances ; and though, when pressed, 


620 


PENDENNIS. 


he did not mind frankly taking twenty pounds himself out of 
the Colonel’s winnings, Strong was a great deal too upright to 
let others cheat him. 

He was not a bad fellow when in good fortune, this Alta- 
mont. He ordered a smart livery for Grady, and made poor 
old Costigan shed tears of quickly dried gratitude by giving 
him a five-pound note after a snug dinner at the Back Kitchen, 
and he bought a green shawl for Mrs. Bolton, and a yellow one 
for Fanny : the most brilliant “ sacrifices ” of a Regent Street 
haberdasher’s window. And a short time after this, upon her 
birthday, which happened in the month of June, Miss Amory 
received from “ a friend ” a parcel containing an enormous brass- 
inlaid writing-desk, in which there was a set of amethysts, the 
most hideous eyes ever looked upon, — a musical snuff-box, and 
two Keepsakes of the year before last, and accompanied with a 
couple of gown-pieces of the most astounding colors, the receipt 
of which goods made the Sylphide laugh and wonder immoder- 
ately. Now it is a fact that Colonel Altamonthad made a pur- 
chase of cigars and French silks from some duffers in Fleet 
Street about this period ; and he was found by Strong in the 
open Auction-Room in Cheapside, having invested some money 
in two desks, several pairs of richly-plated candlesticks, a dinner 
dpergne, and a bagatelle-board. The dinner epergne remained 
at chambers, and figured at the banquets there, which the 
Colonel gave pretty freely. It seemed beautiful in his eyes, 
until Jack Holt said it looked as if it had been taken “in a 
bill.” And Jack Holt certainly knew. 

The dinners were pretty frequent at chambers, and Sir 
Francis Clavering condescended to partake of them constantly. 
His own house was shut up : the successor of Mirobolant, who 
had sent in his bills so prematurely, was dismissed by the in- 
dignant Lady Clavering : the luxuriance of the establishment 
was greatly pruned and reduced. One of the large footmen 
was cashiered, upon which the other gave warning, not liking 
to serve without his mate, or in a family where on’y one foot- 
man was kep’. General and severe economical reforms were 
practised by the Begum in her whole household, in consequence 
of the extravagance of which her graceless husband had been 
guilty. The Major was her ladyship’s friend ; Strong on the 
part of poor Clavering ; her ladyship’s lawyer, and the honest 
Begum herself, executed these reforms with promptitude and 
severity. After paying the Baronet’s debts, the settlement of 
which occasioned considerable public scandal, and caused the 
Baronet to sink even lower in the world’s estimation than he 


PENDENNIS. 


621 


had been before, Lady Clavering quitted London for Tunbridge 
Wells in high dudgeon, refusing to see her reprobate husband, 
whom nobody pitied. Clavering remained in London patiently, 
by no means anxious to meet his wife’s just indignation, and 
sneaked in and out of the House of Commons, whence he and 
Captain Raff and Mr. Marker would go to have a game at 
billiards and a cigar : or showed in the sporting public-houses ; 
or he might be seen lurking about Lincoln’s Inn and his law- 
yers’, where the principals kept him for hours waiting, and the 
clerks winked at each other, as he sat in their office. No 
wonder that he relished the dinners at Shepherd’s Inn, and was 
perfectly resigned there : resigned ? he was so happy nowhere 
else ; he was wretched amongst his equals, who scorned him — • 
but here he was the chief guest at the table, where they con- 
tinually addressed him with 1 Yes, Sir Francis,’ and ‘ No, Sir 
Francis ; ’ where he told his wretched jokes, and where he 
quavered his dreary little French song, after Strong had 
sung his jovial chorus, and honest Costigan had piped his 
' Irish ditties. Such a jolly menage as Strong’s, with Grady’s 
Irish stew, and the Chevalier’s brew of punch after dinner, 
would have been welcome to many a better man than Claver- 
ing, the solitude of whose great house at home frightened 
him, where he was attended only by the old woman who kept 
the house, and his valet who sneered at him. 

“ Yes. dammit,” said he, to his friends in Shepherd’s Inn. 
“ That fellow of mine, I must turn him away, only I owe 
him two years’ wages, curse him, and can’t ask my lady. He 
brings me my tea cold of a morning, with a dem’d leaden 
teaspoon, and he says my lady’s sent all the plate to the 
banker’s because it ain’t safe. — Now ain’t it hard that she 
won’t trust me with a single teaspoon : ain’t it ungentleman- 
like, Altamont? You know my lady’s of low birth — that 
is — I beg your pardon — hem — that is, it’s most cruel of 
her not to show more confidence in me. And the very servants 
begin to laugh — the dam scoundrels ! I’ll break every bone 
in their great hulking bodies, curse ’em, I will. — They don’t 
answer my bell : and — and my man was at Vauxhall last night 
with one of my dress shirts and my velvet waistcoat on, — I 
know it was mine — the confounded impudent blackguard — and 
he went on dancing before my eyes, confound him ! I’m sure 
he’ll live to be hanged — he deserves to be hanged — all those 
infernal rascals of valets.” 

He was very kind to Altamont now : he listened to the 
Colonel’s loud stories when Altamoxit described how — when he 


522 


PENDENNIS. 


was working his way home once from New Zealand, where he 
had been on a whaling expedition — he and his comrades had 
been obliged to shirk on board at night, to escape from their 
wives, by Jove — and how the poor devils put out in their canoes 
when they saw the ship under sail, and paddled madly after 
her : how he had been lost in the bush once for three months 
in New South Wales, when he was there once on a trading 
speculation : how he had seen Boney at Saint Helena, and 
been presented to him with the rest of the officers of the India- 
man of which he was a mate — to all these tales (and over his 
cups Altamont told many of them ; and it must be owned, lied 
and bragged a great deal) Sir Francis now listened with great 
attention ; making a point of drinking wine with Altamont at 
dinner, and of treating him with every distinction. 

“ Leave him alone, I know what he’s a-coming to,” Alta- 
mont said, laughing to Strong, who remonstrated with him, 
“and leave me alone : I know what I’m a-telling, very well. I 
was officer on board an Indiaman, so I was : I traded to New 
South Wales, so I did, in a ship of my own, and lost her. I 
became officer to the Nawaub, so I did; only me and my royal 
master have had a difference, Strong — that’s it. Who’s the 
better or the worse for what I tell ? — or knows anything about 
me ? The other chap is dead — shot in the bush, and his body 
recognized at Sydney. If I thought anybody would split, do 
you think I wouldn’t wring his neck ? I’ve done as good be- 
fore now, Strong — I told you how I did for the overseer before 
I took leave — but in fair fight 1 mean — in fair fight ; or, rayther, 
he had the best of it. He had his gun and bay’net, and I had 
only an axe. Fifty of ’em saw it — ay, and cheered me when I 

did it — and I’d do it again, him, wouldn’t I ? I ain’t 

afraid of anybody ; and I’d have the life of the man who split 
upon me. That’s my maxim, and pass me the liquor — You 
wouldn’t turn on a man. I know you. You’re an honest feller, 
and will stand by a feller, and have looked death in the face 
like a man. But as for that lily-livered sneak — that poor lyin’ 
swindlin’ cringin’ cur of a Clavering — who stands in my shoes 
— stands in my shoes, hang him ! I’ll make him pull my boots 
off and clean ’em, I will. Ha, ha ! ” Here he burst out into 
a wild laugh, at which Strong got up and put away the brandy- 
bottle. The other still laughed good-humoredly. “You’re 
right, old boy,” he said ; “ you always keep your head cool, 
you do — and when I begin to talk too much — I say, when I 
begin to pitch, I authorize you, and order you, and command 
fou, to put awav the brandy-bottle.” 


PENDENNIS . 


623 

The event for which, with cynical enjoyment, Altamont had 
been on the look-out, came very speedily. One day, Strong 
being absent upon an errand for his principal, Sir Francis made 
his appearance in the chambers, and found the envoy of the 
Nawaub alone. He abused the world in general for being 
heartless and unkind to him : he abused his wife for being un- 
generous to him : he abused Strong for being ungrateful — 
hundreds of pounds had he given Ned Strong — been his friend 
for life and kept him out of jail, by Jove, — and now' Ned was 
taking her ladyship’s side against him and abetting her ir. her 
infernal unkind treatment of him. “ They’ve entered into a 
conspiracy to keep me penniless, Altamont,” the Baronet said : 
“ they don’t give me as much pocket-money as Frank has at 
school.” 

“ Why don’t you go down to Richmond and borrow of him, 
Clavering?” Altamont broke out with a savage laugh. “ He 
wouldn’t see his poor old beggar of a father without pocket- 
money, would he ? ” 

“ I tell you, I’ve been obliged to humiliate myself cruelly,” 
Clavering said. “ Look here, sir — look here, at these pawn- 
tickets ! Fancy a Member of Parliament and an old English 
Baronet, by Gad ! obliged to put a drawing-room clock and a 
Buhl inkstand up the spout; and a gold duck’s head paper- 
holder, that I dare say cost my wife five pound, for which they’d 
only give me fifteen-and-six ! Oh, it’s a humiliating thing, sir, 
poverty to a man of my habits ; and it’s made me shed tears, 

sir, — tears ; and that d d valet of mine — curse him, I wish 

he was hanged ! — has had the confounded impudence to threaten 
to tell my lady : as if the things in my own house weren’t my 
own, to sell or to keep, or to fling out of window if I choose — 
by Gad ! the confounded scoundrel.” 

“ Cry a little ; don’t mind cryin’ before me — it’ll relieve 
you, Clavering,” the other said. “ Why, I say, old feller, what 
a happy feller I once thought you, and what a miserable son of 
a gun you really are ! ” 

“ It’s a shame that they treat me so, ain’t it ? ” Clavering 
went on, — for though ordinarily silent and apathetic, about his 
own griefs the Baronet could whine for an hour at a time. 
“ And — and, by Gad, sir, I haven’t got the money to pay the 
very cab that’s waiting for me at the door ; and the porteress, 
that Mrs. Bolton, lent me three shillin’s, and I don’t like to ask 

her for any more : and I asked that d d old Costigan, the 

confounded old penniless Irish miscreant, and he hadn’t got a 
shillin’, the beggar ; and Campion’s out of town, or else he’d 
do a little bill for me, I know he would.” 


624 


PENDENNIS. 


“ I thought you swore on your honor to your wife that you 
wouldn’t put your name to paper,” said Mr. Altamont, puffing 
at his cigar. 

“ Why does she leave me without pocket-money then ? 
Damme, I must have money,” cried out the Baronet. “ Oh, 
Am — , Oh, Altamont, I’m the most miserable beggar alive.” 

“You’d like a chap to lend you a twenty-pound note, 
wouldn’t you now ? ” the other asked. 

“ If you would, I’d be grateful to you forever — forever, 
my dearest friend,” cried Clavering. 

“ How much would you give ? Will you give a fifty-pound 
bill, at six months, for half down and half in plate ? ” asked 
Altamont. 

“ Yes, I would, so help me — , and pay it on the day,” 
screamed Clavering. “ I’ll make it payable at my banker’s : 
I’ll do anything you like.” 

“Well, I was only chaffing you. I’ll give you twenty pound.” 

“You said a pony,” interposed Clavering ; “my dear fel- 
low, you said a pony, and I’ll be eternally obliged to you ; and 
I’ll not take it as a gift — only as a loan, and pay you back in 
six months. I take my oath I will.” 

“Well — well — there’s the money, Sir Francis Clavering. I 
ain’t a bad fellow. When I’ve money in my pocket, dammy, I 
spend it like a man. Here’s five-and-twenty for you. Don’t be 
losing it at the hells now. Don’t be making a fool of yourself. 
Go down to Clavering Park, and it’ll keep you ever so long. 
You needn’t ’ave butchers’ meat: there’s pigs, I dare say, on 
the premises : and you can shoot rabbits for dinner, you know, 
every day till the game comes in. Besides, the neighbors will 
ask you about to dinner, you know, sometimes : for you are a 
Baronet, though you have outrun the constable. And you’ve 
got this comfort, that I'm off your shoulders for a good bit to 
come — p’raps this two years — if I don’t play ; and I don’t in- 
tend to touch the confounded black and red : and by that time 
my lady, as you call her — Jimmy, I used to say — will have come 
round again ; and you’ll be ready for me, you know, and come 
down handsomely to yours truly.” 

At this juncture of their conversation Strong returned, nor 
did the Baronet care much about prolonging the talk, having 
got the money ; and he made his way from Shepherd’s Inn, 
and went home and bullied his servant in a manner so un- 
usually brisk and insolent, that the man concluded his master 
must have pawned some more of the house furniture, or, at any 
rate, have come into possession of some ready-money. 


PENDENNIS. 


625 

“ And yet I’ve looked over the house, Morgan, and I don’t 
think he has took any more of the things,” Sir Francis’s valet 
said to Major Pendennis’s man, as they met at their Club soon 
after. “ My lady locked up a’most all the bejewtary afore she 
went away, and he couldn’t take away the picters and looking- 
glasses in a cab : and he wouldn’t spout the fenders and fire- 
irons — he ain’t so bad as that. But he’s got money somehow. 
He’s so darn’d imperent when he have. A few nights ago I sor 
him at Vauxhall, where I was a polkin with Lady Hemly Babe- 
wood’s gals — a wery pleasant room that is, and an uncommon 
good lot in it, hall except the ’ousekeeper, and she’s metho- 
disticle — I was a polkin — you’re too old a cove to polk, Mr. 
Morgan — and ’ere’s your ’ealth — and. I ’appened to ’ave on 
some of Clavering’s abberdashery, and he sor it too : and he 
didn’t dare so much as speak a word.” 

“ How about the house in St. John’s Wood ? ” Mr. Morgan 
asked. 

“ Execution in it. — Sold up hevery thing : ponies, and 
piana, and brougham, and all. Mrs. Montague Rivers hoff to 
Boulogne, — non est inwentus, Mr. Morgan. It’s my belief she 
put the execution in herself : and was tired of him.” 

“ Play much ? ” asked Morgan. 

“ Not since the smash. When your Governor, and the 
lawyers, and my lady and him had that tremendous scene : he 
went down on his knees, my lady told Mrs. Bonner, as told me, 
— and swore as he never more would touch a card or a dice, or 
put his name to a bit of paper ; and my lady was a goin’ to give 
him the notes down to pay his liabilities after the race : only 
your Governor said, (which he wrote it on a piece of paper, and 
passed it across the table to the lawyer and my lady,) that some 
one else had better book up for him, for he’d have kep’ some of 
the money. He’s a sly old cove, your Gov’nor.” 

The expression of “ old cove,” thus flippantly applied by 
the younger gentleman to himself and his master, displeased 
Mr. Morgan exceedingly. On the first occasion, when Mr. 
Lightfoot used the obnoxious expression, his comrade’s anger 
was only indicated by a silent frown ; but on the second offence, 
Morgan, who was smoking his cigar elegantly, and holding it 
on the tip of his penknife, withdrew the cigar from his lips, and 
took his young friend to task. 

“ Don’t call Major Pendennis an old cove, if you’ll ’ave the 
goodness, Lightfoot, and don’t call me an old cove, nether. 
Such words ain’t used in society ; and we have lived in the fust 
society, both at ’ome and foring. We’ve been intimate with 

40 


626 


PENDENNIS. 


the fust statesmen of Europe. When we go abroad we dine 
with Prince Metternich and Louy Philup reg’lar. We go here 
to the best houses, the tiptops, I tell you. We ride with Lord 
John and the noble Whycount at the edd of Foring Affairs. 
We dine with the Hearl of Burgrave, and are consulted by the 
Marquis of Steyne in everythink. We ought to know a thing 
or two, Mr. Lightfoot. You’re a young man ; I’m an old cove, 
as you say. We’ve both seen the world, and we both know 
that it ain’t money, nor bein’ a Baronet, nor ’avin’ a town and 
country ’ouse, nor a paltry five or six thousand a year.” 

“ It’s ten, Mr. Morgan,” cried Mr. Lightfoot, with great 
animation. 

“It may have been, sir,” Morgan said, with calm severity; 
“ it may have been, Mr. Lightfoot, but it ain’t six now, nor five, 
sir. It’s been doosedly dipped and cut into, sir, by the con- 
founded extravagance of your master, with his helbow shakin’, 
and his bill discountin’, and his cottage in the Regency Park, 
and his many wickednesses. He’s a bad un, Mr. Lightfoot, — 
a bad lot, sir, and that you know. And it ain’t money, sir, — 
not such money as that, at any rate, come from a Calcuttar 
attorney, and I dussay wrung out of the pore starving blacks — 
that will give a pusson position in society, as you know very 
well. We’ve no money, but we go everywhere ; there’s not a 
housekeeper’s room, sir, in this town of any consiquince, where 
James Morgan ain’t welcome. And it was me who got you 
into this Club, Lightfoot, as you very well know, though I am 
an old cove, and they would have blackballed you without me 
as sure as your name is Frederic.” 

“ I know they would, Mr. Morgan,” said the other, with 
much humility. 

“ Well, then, don’t call me an old cove, sir. It ain’t gentle- 
man-like, Frederic Lightfoot, which I knew you when you was 
a cab-boy, and when your father was in trouble, and got you 
the place you have now when the Frenchman went away. And 
if you think, sir, that because you’re making up to Mrs. Bonner, 
who may have saved her two thousand pound — and I dare say 
she has in five-and-twenty years, as she have lived confidential 
maid to Lady Clavering — yet, sir, you must remember who put 
you into that service, and who knows what you were before, sir, 
and it don’t become you Frederic Lightfoot, to call me an old 
cove.” 

“ I beg your pardon, Mr. Morgan — I can’t do more than 
make an apology — will you have a glass, sir, and let me drink 
trour ’ealth ? ” 


PENDENNIS. 


627 

“ You know I don’t take spirits, Lightfoot,’’ replied Morgan, 
appeased. “ And so you and Mrs. Bonner is going to put up 
together, are you ? ” 

“ She’s old, but two thousand pound’s a good bit, you see, 
Mr. Morgan. And we’ll get the ‘ Clavering Arms ’ for a very 
little ; and that’ll be no bad thing when the railroad runs through 
Clavering. And when we are there, I hope you’ll come and 
see us, Mr. Morgan.” 

“ It’s a stoopid place, and no society,” said Mr. Morgan. 
“ I know it well. In Mrs. Pendennis’s time we used to go 
down reg’lar, and the hair refreshed me after the London racket.” 

“The railroad will improve Mr. Arthur’s property,” re- 
marked Lightfoot. “ What’s about the figure of it, should you 
say, sir ? ” 

“Under fifteen hundred, sir,” answered Morgan ; at which 
the other, who knew the extent of poor Arthur’s acres, thrust 
his tongue in his cheek, but remained wisely silent. 

“ Is his man any good, Mr. Morgan ? ” Lightfoot resumed. 

“ Pidgeon ain’t used to society as yet ; but he’s young and 
has good talents, and has read a good deal, and I dessay he will 
do very well,” replied Morgan. “ He wouldn’t quite do for this 
kind of thing, Lightfoot, for he ain’t seen the world yet.” 

When the pint of sherry for which Mr. Lightfoot called, 
upon Mr. Morgan’s announcement that he declined to drink 
spirits, had been discussed by the two gentlemen, who held the 
wine up to the light, and smacked their lips, and winked their 
eyes at it, and rallied the landlord as to the vintage, in the most 
approved manner of connoisseurs, Morgan’s ruffled equanimity 
was quite restored, and he was prepared to treat his young friend 
with perfect good-humor. 

“ What d’you think about Miss Amory, Lightfoot — tell us in 
confidence, now — Do you think we should do — well — you un- 
derstand — if we make Miss A. into Mrs. A. P., comprendy vous ? ” 

“ She and her ma’s always quarrelin’,” said Mr. Lightfoot. 
“ Bonner is more than a match for the old lady, and treats Sir 
Francis like — like this year spill, which I fling into the grate. 
But she daren’t say a word to Miss Amory. No more dare none 
of us. When a visitor comes in, she smiles and languishes, 
you’d think that butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth : and the 
minute he is gone, very likely, she flares up like a little demon, 
and says things fit to send you wild. If Mr. Arthur comes, it’s 
‘ Do let’s sing that there delightful song ! ’ or, ‘ Come and write 
me them pooty verses in this halbum ! ’ and very likely she’s 
been a rilin’ her mother, or sticking pins into her maid, a minute 


628 


PENDENNIS. 


before. She do stick pins into her and pinch her. Mary 
Hann showed me one of her arms quite black and blue ; and 
I recklect Mrs. Bonner, who’s as jealous of me as a old cat, 
boxed her ears for showing me. And then you should see Miss 
at luncheon, when there’s nobody but the family. She makes 
b’leave she never heats, and my ! you should only jest see her. 
She has Mary Hann to bring her up plum-cakes and creams 
into her bedroom ; and the cook’s the only man in the house 
she’s civil to. Bonner says, how, the second season in London, 
Mr. Soppington was a goin’ to propose for her, and actially 
came one day, and sor her fling a book into the fire, and scold 
her mother so, that he went down softly by the back droring- 
room door, which he came in by ; and next thing we heard of 
him was, he was married to Miss Rider. Oh, she’s a devil, that 
little Blanche, and that’s my candig apinium, Mr. Morgan.” 

“ Apinion, not apinium, Lightfoot, my good-fellow,” Mr. 
Morgan said, with parental kindness ; and then asked of his 
own bosom, with a sigh, why the deuce does my Governor want 
Master Arthur to marry such a girl as this ? And the tete-a-tete 
of the two gentlemen was broken up by the entry of other 
gentlemen, members of the Club — when fashionable town-talk, 
politics, cribbage, and other amusements ensued, and the con- 
versation became general. 

The Gentleman’s Club was held in the parlor of the “Wheel 
of Fortune ” public-house, in a snug little by-lane, leading out 
of one of the great streets of May Fair, and frequented by 
some of the most select gentlemen about town. Their mas- 
ters’ affairs, debts, intrigues, adventures ; their ladies’ good 
and bad qualities and quarrels with their husbands; all the 
family secrets were here discussed with perfect freedom and 
confidence : and here, when about to enter into a new situation, 
a gentleman was enabled to get every requisite information re- 
garding the family of which he proposed to become a member. 
Liveries, it may be imagined, were excluded from this select 
precinct ; and the powdered heads of the largest metropolitan 
footmen might bow down in vain entreating admission into the 
Gentlemen’s Club. These outcast giants in plush took their 
beer in an outer apartment of the “Wheel of Fortune,” and 
could no more get an entry into the Club room than a Pall 
Mall tradesman or a Lincoln’s Inn attorney could get admis- 
sion into Bays’s or Spratt’s. And it is because the conversation 
which we have been permitted to overhear here, in some meas- 
ure explains the characters and bearings of our story, that we 
have ventured to introduce the reader into a society so exclusive. 


PENDENNIS ; 


629 


CHAPTER LXI. 

THE WAY OF THE WORLD. 

A short time after the piece of good-fortune which befell 
Colonel Altamont at Epsom, that gentleman put into execution 
his projected foreign tour, and the chronicler of the polite 
world who goes down to London Bridge for the purpose of 
taking leave of the people of fashion who quit this country, 
announced that among the company on board the Soho to 
Antwerp last Saturday, were “ Sir Robert, Lady, and the Misses 
Hodge ; Mr. Serjeant Kewsy, and Mrs. and Miss Kewsy ; Col- 
onel Altamont, Major Coddy,” &c. The Colonel travelled in 
state, and as became a gentleman : he appeared in a rich 
travelling costume ; he drank brandy-and-water freely during 
the passage, and was not sick, as some of the other passengers 
were ; and he was attended by his body servant, the faithful 
Irish legionary who had been for some time in waiting upon 
himself and Captain Strong in their chambers of Shepherd’s 
Inn. 

The Chevalier partook of a copious dinner at Blackwall 
with his departing friend the Colonel, and one or two others, 
who drank many healths to Altamont at that liberal gentleman’s 
expense. “ Strong, old boy,” the Chevalier’s worthy chum 
said, “ if you want a little money, now’s your time. I’m your 
man. You’re a good feller, and have been a good feller to me, 
and a twenty-pound note more or less will make no odds to 
me.” But Strong said, No, he didn’t want any money; he was 
flush, quite flush — “ that is, not flush enough to pay you back 
your last loan, Altamont, but quite able to carry on for some 
time to come ” — and so, with a not uncordial greeting between 
them, the two parted. Had the possession of money really 
made Altamont more honest and amiable than he had hitherto 
been, or only caused him to seem more amiable in Strong’s 
eyes ? Perhaps he really was better ; and money improved 
him. Perhaps it was the beauty of wealth Strong saw and re- 
spected. But he argued within himself, “This poor devil, this 
unlucky outcast of a returned convict, is ten times as good a 
fellow as my friend Sir Francis Clavering, Bart. He has pluck 
and honesty in his way. He will stick to a friend, and face an 
enemy. The other never had courage to do either. And what 


PEND ENNIS. 


630 

is it that has put the poor devil under a cloud ? He was only 
a little wild, and signed his father-in-law’s name. Many a man 
has done worse, and come to no wrong, and holds his head up. 
Clavering does. No, he don’t hold his head up : he never did 
in his best days.” And Strong, perhaps, repented him of the 
falsehood which he had told to the free-handed Colonel, that 
he was not in want of money ; but it was a falsehood on the 
side of honesty, and the Chevalier could not bring down his 
stomach to borrow a second time from his outlawed friend. 
Besides, he could get on. Clavering had promised him some : 
not that Clavering’s promises were much to be believed, but 
the Chevalier was of a hopeful turn, and trusted in many chances 
of catching his patron, and waylaying some of those stray re- 
mittances and supplies, in the procuring of which for his prin- 
cipal lay Mr. Strong’s chief business. 

He had grumbled about Altamont’s companionship in the 
Shepherd’s Inn chambers ; but he found those lodgings more 
glum now without his partner than 'with him. The solitary life 
was not agreeable to his social soul ; and he had got into ex- 
travagant and luxurious habits, too, having a servant at his 
command to run his errands, to arrange his toilettes, and to 
cook his meal. It was rather a grand and touching sight now 
to see the portly and handsome gentleman painting his own 
boots, and broiling his own mutton-chop. It has been before 
stated that the Chevalier had a wife, a Spanish lady of Vittoria, 
who had gone back to her friends, after a few months’ union 
with the Captain, whose head she broke with a dish. He began 
to think whether he should not go back and see his Juanita. 
The Chevalier was growing melancholy after the departure of 
his friend the Colonel ; or, to use his own picturesque expres- 
sion, was “ down on his luck.” These moments of depression 
and intervals of ill-fortune occur constantly in the lives of 
heroes. Marius at Minturnae, Charles Edward in the High- 
lands, Napoleon before Elba: — what great man has not been 
called upon to face evil fortune ? 

From Clavering no supplies were to be had for some time. 
The five-and-twenty pounds, or “ pony ” which the exemplary 
Baronet had received from Mr. Altamont, had fled out of Clav- 
ering’s keeping as swiftly as. many previous ponies. He had 
been down the river with a choice party of sporting gents, who 
dodged the police and landed in Essex, where they put up 
Billy Bluck to fight Dick the cabman, whom the Baronet backed, 
and who had it all his own way for thirteen rounds, when, by 
an unlucky blow in the windpipe, Billy killed him. “It’s 


PENDENNIS. 


631 

always my luck, Strong,” Sir Francis said ; “ the betting was 
three to one on the cabman, and I thought myself as sure of 
thirty pounds, as if I had it in my pocket. And dammy, I owe 
my man Lightfoot fourteen pound now which he’s lent and paid 
for me : and he duns me — the confounded impudent black- 
guard : and I wish to Heaven I knew any way of getting a bill 
done, or of screwing a little out of my lady ! I’ll give you half, 
Ned, upon my soul and honor, I’ll give you half if you can get 
anybody to do us a little fifty.” 

But Ned said sternly that he had given his word of honor, 
as a gentleman, that he would be no party to any future bill- 
transactions in which her husband might engage (who had 
given his word of honor too), and the Chevalier said that he, 
at least, would keep his word, and would black his own boots 
all his life rather than break his promise. And what is more, 
he vowed he would advise Lady Clavering that Sir Francis was 
about to break his faith towards her, upon the very first hint 
which he could get that such was Clavering’s intention. 

Upon this information Sir Francis Clavering, according to 
his custom, cried and cursed very volubly. He spoke of death 
as his only resource. He besought and implored his dear 
Strong, his best friend, his dear old Ned, not to throw him 
over : and when he quitted his dearest Ned, as he went down 
the stairs of Shepherd’s Inn, swore and blasphemed at Ned as 
the most infernal villain, and traitor, and blackguard, and cow- 
ard under the sun, and wished Ned was in his grave, and in a 
worse place, only he would like the confounded ruffian to live, 
until Frank Clavering had had his revenge out of him. 

In Strong’s chambers the Baronet met a gentleman whose 
visits were now, as it has been shown, very frequent in Shep- 
herd’s Inn, Mr. Samuel Huxter, of Clavering. That young 
fellow, who had poached the walnuts in Clavering Park in his 
youth, and had seen the Baronet drive through the street at 
home with four horses, and prance up to church with powdered 
footmen, had an immense respect for his Member, and a prodi- 
gious delight in making his acquaintance. He introduced him- 
self, with much blushing and trepidation, as a Clavering man — 
son of Mr. Huxter, of the market-place — father attended Sir 
Francis’s keeper, Coxwood, when his gun burst and took off 
three fingers — proud to make Sir Francis’s acquaintance. All 
of which introduction Sir Francis received affably. And honest 
Huxter talked about Sir Francis to the chaps at Bartholomew’s ; 
and told Fanny, in the lodge, that, after all, there was nothing 
like a thorough-bred un, a regular good old English gentleman, 


PENDENNIS. 


632 

one of the olden time ! To which Fanny replied, that she 
thought Sir Francis was an ojous creature — she didn’t know 
why — but she couldn’t abear him — she was sure he was wicked, 
and low, and mean — she knew he was ; and when Sam to this 
replied that Sir Francis was very affable, and had borrowed 
half a sov’ of him quite kindly, Fanny burst into a laugh, pulled 
Sam’s long hair (which was not yet of irreproachable cleanli- 
ness), patted his chin, and called him a stoopid, stoopid, old 
foolish stoopid, and said that Sir Francis was always borrering 
money of everybody, and that Mar had actially refused him 
twice, and had had to wait three months to get seven shillings 
which he had borrered of ’er. 

“ Don’t say ’er but her, borrer but borrow, actially but ac- 
tually, Fanny,” Mr. Huxter replied — not to a fault in her 
argument, but to grammatical errors in her statement. 

“Well then, her, and borrow, and hactually — there then, 
you stoopid,” said the other ; and the scholar made such a 
pretty face that the grammar- master was quickly appeased, and 
would have willingly given her a hundred lessons on the spot, 
at the price which he took for that one. 

Of course Mrs. Bolton was by, and I suppose that Fanny 
and Mr. Sam were on exceedingly familiar and confidential 
terms by this time, and that time had brought to the former 
certain consolations, and soothed certain regrets, which are 
deucedly bitter when they occur, but which are, no more than 
tooth-pulling, or any other pang, eternal. 

As you sit, surrounded by respect and affection ; happy, 
honored, and flattered in your old age ; your foibles gently in- 
dulged ; your least words kindly cherished ; your garrulous old 
stories received for the hundredth time with dutiful forbear* 
ance, and never-failing hypocritical smiles ; the women of your 
house constant in their flatteries : the young men hushed and 
attentive when you begin to speak ; the servants awe-stricken ; 
the tenants cap in hand, and ready to act in the place of your 
worship’s horses when your honor takes a drive — it has often 
struck you, O thoughtful Dives ! that this respect, and these 
glories, are for the main part transferred, with your fee simple, 
to your successor — that the servants will bow, and the tenants 
shout for your son as for you ; that the butler will fetch him 
the wine (improved by a little keeping) that’s now in your cel- 
lar ; and that, when your night has come, and the light of your 
life has gone down, as sure as the morning rises after you 
and without you, the sun of prosperity and flattery shines on 



MR. HUXTER LIKES TO BE CALLED A GOOSE. 












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PENDENNIS. 


your heir. Men come and bask in the halo of consols and 
acres that beams round about him : the reverence is transferred 
with the estate ; of which, with all its advantages, pleasures, 
respect, and good-will, he in turn becomes the life-tenant. 
How long do you wish or expect that your people will regret 
you ? How much time does a man devote to grief before he 
begins to enjoy ? A great man must keep his heir at his feast 
like a living memento mori. If he holds very much by life, the 
presence of the other must be a constant sting and warning. 
“ Make ready to go,” says the successor to your honor ; “ I 
am waiting : and I could hold it as well as you.” 

What has this reference to the possible reader, to do with 
any of the characters of this history ! Do we wish to apolo- 
gize for Pen because he has got a white hat, and because his 
mourning for his mother is fainter ? All the lapse of years, all 
the career of fortune, all the events of life, however strongly 
they may move or eagerly excite him, never can remove that 
sainted image from his heart, or banish that blessed love from 
its sanctuary. If he yields to wrong, the dear eyes will look 
sadly upon him when he dares to meet them ; if he does well, 
endures pain, or conquers temptation, the ever-present love will 
greet him, he knows, with approval and pity ; if he falls plead 
for him ; if he suffers, cheer him ; — be with him and accom- 
pany him always until death is past, and sorrow and sin are 
no more. Is this mere dreaming, or, on the part of an idle 
story-teller, useless moralizing? May not the man of the 
world take his moment, too, to be grave and thoughtful ? Ask 
of your own hearts and memories, brother and sister, if we 
do not live in the dead ; and (to speak reverently) prove God 
by love ? 

Of these matters Pen and Warrington often spoke in many a 
solemn and friendly converse in after days ; and Pendennis’s 
mother was worshipped in his memory, and canonized there, as 
such a saint ought to be. Lucky he in life who knows a few 
such women ! A kind provision of Heaven it was that sent us 
such ; and gave us to admire that touching and wonderful 
spectacle of innocence, and love, and beauty. 

But as it is certain that if, in the course of these sentimental 
conversations, any outer stranger, Major Pendennis for instance, 
had walked into Pen’s Chambers, Arthur and Warrington would 
have stopped their talk, and chosen another subject, and dis- 
coursed about the Opera, or the last debate in Parliament, or 
Miss Jones’s marriage with. Captain Smith, or what not, — so, 
let us imagine that "the public steps in at this juncture, and 


PENDENNIS. 


634 

stops the confidential talk between author and reader, and begs 
us to resume our remarks about this world, with which both 
are certainly better acquainted than with that other one into 
which we have just been peeping. 

On coming into his property, Arthur Pendennis at first 
comported himself with a modesty and equanimity which ob- 
tained his friend Warrington’s praises, though Arthur’s uncle 
was a little inclined to quarrel with his nephew’s meanness of 
spirit, for not assuming greater state and pretensions now that 
he had entered on the enjoyment of his kingdom. He would 
have had Arthur installed in handsome quarters, and riding on 
showy park hacks, or in well-built cabriolets, every day. “ I 
am too absent,” Arthur said with a laugh, “ to drive a cab in 
London ; the omnibuses would cut me in two, or I should send 
my horse’s head into the ladies’ carriage-windows ; and you 
wouldn’t have me driven about by my servant like an apothecary, 
uncle ? ’* No, Major Pendennis would on no account have his 
nephew appear like an apothecary ; the august representative 
of the house of Pendennis must not so demean himself. And 
when Arthur, pursuing his banter, said, “ And yet, I dare say, 
sir, my father was proud enough when he first set up his gig,” 
the old Major hemmed andha’d, and his wrinkled face reddened 
with a blush as he answered, “ You know what Bonaparte said, 
sir, ‘ II faut laver son Huge sale en famillel There is no need, 
sir, for you to brag that your father was a — a medical man. 
He came of a most ancient but fallen house, and was obliged 
to reconstruct the family fortunes, as many a man of good 
family has done before him. You are like the fellow in Sterne, 
sir — the Marquis who came to demand his sword again. Your 
father got back yours for you. You are a man of landed estate, 
by Gad, sir, and a gentleman — never forget you are a gentleman.” 

Then Arthur slyly turned on his uncle the argument which 
he had heard the old gentleman often use regarding himself. 
“ In the society which I have the honor of frequenting through 
your introduction, who cares to ask about my paltry means or 
my humble gentility, uncle ? ” he asked. “It would be absurd 
of me to attempt to compete with the great folks ; and all that 
they can ask from us is, that we should have a decent address 
and good manners.” 

“ But for all that, sir, I should belong to a better Club or 
two,” the uncle answered : “ I should give an occasional dinner, 
and select my society well ; and I should come out of that 
horrible garret in the Temple, sir.” And so Arthur compro- 
mised, by descending to the second floor in Lamb Court : War- 


PENDENNIS . 


635 

rington still occupying his old quarters, and the two friends 
being determined not to part one from the other. Cultivate 
kindly, reader, those friendships of your youth : it is only in 
that generous time that they are formed. How different the 
intimacies of after days are, and how much weaker the grasp 
of your own hand after it has been shaken about in twenty 
years’ commerce with the world, and has squeezed and dropped 
a thousand equally careless palms ! As you can seldom fashion 
your tongue to speak a new language after twenty, the heart 
refuses to receive friendship pretty soon : it gets too hard to 
yield to the impression. 

So Pen had many acquaintances, and being of a jovial and 
easy turn, got more daily : but no friend like Warrington ; and 
the two men continued to live almost as much in common as 
the Knights of the Temple, riding upon one horse (for Pen’s 
was at Warrington’s service), and having their chambers and 
their servitor in common. 

Mr. Warrington had made the acquaintance of Pen’s friends 
of Grosvenor Place during their last unlucky season in London, 
and had expressed himself no better satisfied with Sir Francis 
and Lady Clavering and her ladyship's daughter than was the 
public in general. “ The world is right,” George said, “ about 
those people. The young men laugh and talk freely before 
those ladies, and about them. The girl sees people whom she 
has no right to know, and talks to men with whom no girl 
should have an intimacy. Did you see those two reprobates 
leaning over Lady Clavering’s carriage in the Park the other 
day, and leering under Miss Blanche’s bonnet ? No good 
mother would let her daughter know those men, or admit them 
within her doors.” 

“ The Begum is the most innocent and good-natured soul 
alive,” interposed Pen. “ She never heard any harm of Cap- 
tain Blackball, or read that trial in which Charley Lovelace 
figures. Do you suppose that honest ladies read and remem- 
ber the Chronique Scandaleuse as well as you, you old grum- 
bler ? ” 

“ Would you like Laura Bell to know those fellows ? ” War- 
rington asked, his face turning rather red. “ Would you let 
any woman you loved be contaminated by their company ? I 
have no doubt that the poor Begum is ignorant of their his- 
tories. It seems to me she is ignorant of a great number of 
better things. It seems to me that your honest Begum is not 
a lady, Pen. It is not her fault, doubtless, that she has not had 
the education or learned the refinements of a lady.” 


PENDENNIS. 


636 

“ She is as moral as Lady Portsea, who has all the world at 
her balls, and as refined as Mrs. Bull, who breaks the king’s 
English, and has half a dozen dukes at her table,” Pen answered, 
rather sulkily. “ Why should you and I be more squeamish 
than the rest of the world ? Why are we to visit the sins of her 
fathers on this harmless kind creature ? She never did any- 
thing but kindness to you or any mortal soul. As far as she 
knows, she does her best. She does not set up to be more than 
she is. She gives you the best dinners she can buy, and the 
best company she can get. She pays the debts of that scamp 
of a husband of hers. She spoils her boy like the most virtuous 
mother in England. Her opinion about literary matters, to be 
sure, is not worth much ; and I dare say she never read a line 
of Wordsworth, or heard of Tennyson in her life.” 

“ No more has Mrs. Flanagan the laundress,” growled out 
Pen’s Mentor ; “ no more has Betty the housemaid ; and I have 
no word of blame against them. But a high-souled man doesn’t 
make friends of these. A gentleman doesn’t choose these for 
his companions, or bitterly rues it afterwards if he do. Are 
you, who are setting up to be a man of the world and a philoso- 
pher, to tell me that the aim of life is to guttle three courses 
and dine off silver ? Do you dare to own to yourself that your 
ambition in life is good claret, and that you’ll dine with any, 
provided you get a stalled ox to feed on ? You call me a Cynic 
— why, what a monstrous Cynicism it is, which you and the 
rest of you men of the world admit. I’d rather live upon raw 
turnips and sleep in a hollow tree, or turn backwoodsman or 
savage, than degrade myself to this civilization, and own that a 
French cook was the thing in life best worth living for.” 

“ Because you like a raw beefsteak and a pipe afterwards,” 
broke out Pen, “you give yourself airs of superiority over people 
whose tastes are more dainty, and are not ashamed of the world 
they live in. Who goes about professing particular admiration, 
or esteem, or friendship, or gratitude even, for the people one 
meets every day ? If A. asks me to his house, and gives me 
his best, I take his good things for what they are worth and no 
more. I do not profess to pay him back in friendship, but in 
the conventional money of society. When we part, we part 
without any grief. When we meet, we are tolerably glad to see 
one another. If I were only to live with my friends, your black 
muzzle, old George, is the only face I should see.” 

“You are your uncle’s pupil,” said Warrington, rather sadly; 
“ and you speak like a worldling.” 

“ And why not ? ” asked Pendennis ; “ why not acknowledge 


P EJVD ENNIS. 


637 

the world I stand upon, and submit to the conditions of the 
society which we live in and live by ? I am older than you, 
George, in spite of your grizzled whiskers, and have seen much 
more of the world than you have in your garret here, shut up 
with your books and your reveries and your ideas of one-and- 
twenty. I say, I take the world as it is, and being of it, will not 
be ashamed of it. If the time is out of joint, have I any calling 
or strength to set it right ? ” 

“ Indeed, I don’t think you have much of either,” growled 
Pen’s interlocutor. 

“ If I doubt whether I am better than my neighbor,” Arthur 
continued, — “ if I concede that I am no better, — I also doubt 
whether he is better than I. I see men who begin with ideas 
of universal reform, and who, before their beards are grown, 
propound their loud plans for the regeneration of mankind, give 
up their schemes after a few years of bootless talking and vain- 
glorious attempts to lead their fellows ; and after they have 
found that men will no longer hear them, as indeed they never 
were in the least worthy to be heard, sink quietly into the rank 
and file, — acknowledging their aims impracticable, or thankful 
that they were never put into practice. The fiercest reformers 
grow calm, and are fain to put up with things as they are : the 
loudest Radical orators become dumb, quiescent placemen : the 
most fervent Liberals, when out of power, become humdrum 
Conservatives, or downright tyrants or despots in office. Look 
at Thiers, look at Guizot, in opposition and in place ! Look at 
the Whigs appealing to the country, and the Whigs in power ! 
Would you say that the conduct of these men is an act of 
treason, as the Radicals bawl, — who would give way in their 
turn, were their turn ever to come ? No, only that they submit 
to circumstances which are stronger than they, — march as the 
world marches towards reform, but at the world’s pace, (and the 
movements of the vast body of mankind must needs be slow,) 
— forego this scheme as impracticable, on account of opposi- 
tion, — that as immature, because against the sense of the ma- 
jority, — are forced to calculate drawbacks and difficulties, as 
well as to think of reforms and advances, — and compelled finally 
to submit, and to wait, and to compromise.” 

“ The Right Honorable Arthur Pendennis could not speak 
better, or be more satisfied with himself, if he was First Lord 
of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer,” Warring- 
ton said. 

“ Self-satisfied ? Why self-satisfied ? ” continued Pen. “ It 
seems to me that my skepticism is more respectful and more 


PENDENNIS. 


6 3 S 

modest than the revolutionary ardor of other folks. Many a 
patriot of eighteen, many a Spouting-Club orator, would turn 
the Bishops out of the House of Lords to-morrow, and throw 
the Lords out after the Bishops, and throw the throne into the 
Thames after the Peers and the Bench. Is that man more 
modest than I, who take these institutions as I find them, and 
wait for time and truth to develop, or fortify, or (if you like) de- 
stroy them ? A college tutor, or a nobleman’s toady, who ap- 
pears one fine day as my right reverend lord, in a silk apron 
and shovel-hat, and assumes benedictory airs over me, is still 
the same man we remember at Oxbridge, when he was truckling 
to the tufts, and bullying the poor undergraduates in the lecture- 
room. An hereditary legislator, who passes his time with jock- 
eys and blacklegs and ballet-girls, and who is called to rule 
over me and his other betters because his grandfather made a 
lucky speculation in the funds, or found a coal or tin mine on 
his property, or because his stupid ancestor happened to be in 
command of ten thousand men as brave as himself, who over- 
came twelve thousand Frenchmen or fifty thousand Indians— 
such a man, I say, inspires me with no more respect than the 
bitterest democrat can feel towards him. But, such as he is, he 
is a part of the old society to which we belong : and I submit to 
his lordship with acquiescence ; and he takes his place above 
the best of us at all dinner-parties, and there bides his time. I 
don’t want to chop his head off with a guillotine, or to fling mud 
at him in the streets. When they call such a man a disgrace to 
his order ; and such another, who is good and gentle, refined 
and generous, who employs his great means in promoting every 
kindness and charity, and art and grace of life, in the kindest 
and most gracious manner, an ornament to his rank — the ques- 
tion as to the use and propriety of the order is not in the least 
affected one way or the other. There it is, extant among us, 
a part of our habits, the creed of many of us, the growth of 
centuries, the symbol of a most complicated tradition — there 
stand my lord the bishop and my lord the hereditary legislator 
— what the French call transactions both of them, — representing 
in their present shape mail-clad barons and double-sworded 
chiefs, (from whom their lordships and hereditaries, for the 
most part, don't descend,) and priests, professing to hold 
an absolute truth and a divinely inherited power, the which truth 
absolute our ancestors burned at the stake, and denied there ; 
the which divine transmissible power still exists in print — to be 
believed, or not, pretty much at choice ; and of these, I say, I 
acquiesce that they exist, and no more. If you say that these 


PENDENNIS. 


6 39 

schemes, devised before printing was known, or steam was born ; 
when thought was an infant, scared and whipped ; and truth 
under its guardians was gagged, and swathed, and blind- 
rolded, and not allowed to lift its voice, or to look out, or to 
walk under the sun ; before men were permitted to meet, or to 
trade, or to speak with each other — if any one says (as some 
faithful souls do) that these schemes are forever, and having 
been changed and modified constantly are to be subject to no 
farther development or decay, I laugh, and let the man speak. 
But I would have toleration for these, as I would ask it for my 
own opinions ; and if they are to die, I would rather they had 
a decent and natural than an abrupt and violent death.” 

“You would have sacrificed to Jove,” Warrington said, 
“ had you lived in the time of the Christian persecutions.” 

“ Perhaps I would,” said Pen, with some sadness. “ Per- 
haps I am a coward, — perhaps my faith is unsteady ; but this is 
my own reserve. What I argue here is that I will not perse-' 
cute. Make a faith or a dogma absolute, and persecution be- 
comes a logical consequence ; and Dominic burns a Jew, or 
Calvin an Arian, or Nero a Christian, or Elizabeth or Mary a 
Papist or Protestant ; or their father both or either, according 
to his humor ; and acting without any pangs of remorse, — but 
on the contrary, with strict notions of duty fulfilled. Make 
dogma absolute, and to inflict or to suffer death becomes easy 
ancl necessary ; and Mahomet’s soldiers shouting 1 Paradise ! 
Paradise ! * and dying on the Christian spears, are not more or 
less praiseworthy than the same men slaughtering a townful 
of Jews, or cutting off the heads of all prisoners who would 
not acknowledge that there was but one prophet of God.” 

“ A little while since, young one,” Warrington said, who 
had been listening to his friend’s confessions neither without 
sympathy nor scorn, for his mood led him to indulge in both, 
“ you asked me why I remained out of the strife of the world, 
and looked on at the great labor of my neighbor without tak- 
ing any part in the struggle ? Why, what a mere dilettante you 
own yourself to be, in this confession of general skepticism, and 
what a listless spectator yourself ! You are six-and-twenty 
years old, and as blase as a rake of sixty. You neither hope 
much, nor care much, nor believe much. You doubt about 
other men as much as about yourself. Were it made of such 
pococuranti as you, the world would be intolerable ; and I had 
rather live in a wilderness of monkeys, and listen to their chat- 
ter, than in a company of men who denied everything.” 

“ Were the world composed of Saint Bernards or Saint 


PENDENNIS. 


640 

Dominies, it would be equally odious,” said Pen, “ and at the 
end of a few score years would cease to exist altogether. 
Would you have every man with his head shaved, and every 
woman in a cloister, — carrying out to the full the ascetic prin- 
ciple ? Would you have conventicle hymns twanging from 
every lane in every city in the world ? Would you have all the 
birds of the forest sing one note and fly with one feather? You 
call me a skeptic because I acknowledge what is; and in 
acknowledging that, be it linnet or lark, or priest or parson ; be 
it, I mean, any single one of the infinite varieties of the crea- 
tures of God (whose very name I would be understood to pro- 
nounce with reverence, and never to approach but with distant 
awe), I say that the study and acknowledgment of that variety 
amongst men especially increases our respect and wonder for 
the Creator, Commander, and Ordainer of all these minds, so 
different and yet so united, — meeting in a common adoration, 
and offering up, each according to his degree and means of 
approaching the Divine centre, his acknowledgment of praise 
and worship, each singing (to recur to the bird simile) his 
natural song.” 

“ And so, Arthur, the hymn of a saint, or the ode of a poet, 
or the chant of a Newgate thief, are all pretty much the same in 
your philosophy,” said George. 

“ Even that sneer could be answered were it to the point,” 
Pendennis replied ; “ but it is not ; and it could be replied to 
you, that even to the wretched outcry of the thief on the tree, 
the wisest and the best of all teachers we know of, the untiring 
Corriforter and Consoler, promised a pitiful hearing and a cer- 
tain hope. Hymns of saints ! Odes of poets ! who are we to 
measure the chances and opportunities, the means of doing, or 
even judging, right and wrong, awarded to men ; and to estab- 
lish the rule for meting out their punishments and rewards ? 
We are as insolent and unthinking in judging of men’s morals 
as of their intellects. We admire this man as being a great 
philosopher, and set down the other as a dullard, not knowing 
either, or the amount of truth in either, or being certain of the 
truth anywhere. We sing Te Deum for this hero who has won 
a battle, and De Profundis for that other one who has broken 
out of prison, and has been caught afterwards by the policemen. 
Our measure of rewards and punishments is most partial and 
incomplete, absurdly inadequate, utterly worldly, and we wish 
to continue it into the next world. Into that next and awful 
world we strive to pursue men, and send after them our im- 
potent party verdicts of condemnation or acquittal. We set up 


PENDEJSTNIS. 


641 

our paltry little rods to measure Heaven immeasurable, as if, in 
comparison to that, Newton’s mind, or Pascal’s or Shakspeare’s, 
was any loftier than mine ; as if the ray which travels from the 
sun would reach me sooner than the man who blacks my boots. 
Measured by that altitude, the tallest and the smallest among 
us are so alike diminutive and pitifully base, that I say we 
should take no count of the calculation, and it is a meanness to 
reckon the difference.” 

“Your figure fails there, Arthur,” said the other, better 
pleased ; “ if even by common arithmetic we can multiply as we 
can reduce almost infinitely, the Great Reckoner must take 
count of all ; and the small is not small, or the great great, to 
His infinity.” 

“ I don’t call those calculations in question,” Arthur said ; 
“ I only say that yours are incomplete and premature ; false in 
consequence, and, by every operation, multiplying into wider 
error. I do not condemn the men who killed Socrates and 
damned Galileo. I say that they damned Galileo and killed 
Socrates.” 

“ And yet but a moment since you admitted the propriety 
of acquiescence in the present, and, I suppose, all other 
tyrannies? ” 

“No: but that if an opponent menaces me, of whom and 
without cost of blood and violence I can get rid, I would rather 
wait him out, and starve him out, than fight him out. Fabius 
fought Hannibal skeptically. Who was his Roman coadjutor, 
whom we read of in Plutarch when we were boys, who scoffed 
at the other’s procrastination and doubted his courage, and en- 
gaged the enemy and was beaten for his pains ? ” 

In these speculations and confessions of Arthur, the reader 
may perhaps see allusions to questions which, no doubt, have 
occupied and discomposed himself, and which he may have 
answered by very different solutions to those come to by our 
friend. We are not pledging ourselves for the correctness of 
his opinions, which readers will please to consider are delivered 
dramatically, the writer being no more answerable for them 
than for the sentiments uttered by any other character of the 
story : our endeavor is merely to follow out, in its progress, the 
development of the mind of a worldly and selfish, but not un- 
generous or unkind or truth-avoiding man. And it will be seen 
that the lamentable stage to which his logic at present has 
brought him, is one of general skepticism and sneering acquies- 
cence in the world as it is ; or if you like so to call it, a belief 

41 


PENDENNIS. 


642 

qualified with scorn in all things extant. The tastes and habits 
of such a man prevent him from being a boisterous demagogue, 
and his love of truth and dislike of cant keep him from advan- 
cing crude propositions, such as many loud reformers are con- 
stantly ready with ; much more of uttering downright falsehoods 
in arguing questions or abusing opponents, which he would die 
or starve rather than use. It was not in our friend’s nature to 
be able to utter certain lies ; nor was he strong enough to pro- 
test against others, except with a polite sneer ; his maxim being, 
that he owed obedience to all Acts of Parliament, as long as 
they were not repealed. 

And to what does this easy and skeptical life lead a man ? 
Friend Arthur was a Sadducee, and the Baptist might be in the 
Wilderness shouting to the poor, who were listening with all 
their might and faith to the preacher’s awful accents and de- 
nunciations of wrath or woe or salvation ; and our friend the 
Sadducee would turn his sleek mule with a shrug and a smile 
from the crowd, and go home to the shade of his terrace, and 
muse over preacher and audience, and turn to his roll of Plato, 
or his pleasant Greek song-book babbling of honey and Hybla, 
and nymphs and fountains and love. To what, we say, does 
this skepticism lead ? It leads a man to a shameful loneliness 
and selfishness, so to speak — the more shameful, because it is 
so good-humored and conscienceless and serene. Conscience ! 
What is conscience ? Why accept remorse ? What is publi-c 
or private faith ? Mythuses alike enveloped in enormous tradi- 
tion. If seeing and acknowledging the lies o c *he world, Arthur, 
as see them you can with only too fatal a clearness, you submit 
to them without any protest farther than a laugh : if, plunged 
yourself in easy sensuality, you allow the whole wretched world 
to pass groaning by you unmoved : if the fight for the truth is 
taking place, and all men of honor are on the ground armed on 
the one side or the other, and you alone are to lie on your bal- 
cony and smoke your pipe out of the noise and the danger, you 
had better have died, or never have been at all, than such a 
sensual coward. 

“ The truth, friend ! ” Arthur said, imperturbably ; “ where 
is the truth ? Show- it me. That is the question between us. 
I see it on both sides. I see it on the Conservative side 
of the House, and amongst the Radicals, and even on the 
ministerial benches. I see it in this man who worships by Act 
of Parliament, and is rewarded with a silk apron and five thou- 
sand a year ; in that man, who, driven fatally by the remorse- 
less logic of his creed, gives up everything, friends, fame, dear- 


PEND ENNIS. 


643 

est ties, closest vanities, the respect of an army of churchmen, 
the recognized position of a leader, and passes over, truth-im- 
pelled, to the enemy, in whose ranks he is ready to serve hence- 
forth as a nameless private soldier : — I see the truth in that 
man, as I do in his brother, whose logic drives him to quite a 
different conclusion, and who, after having passed a life in vain 
endeavors to reconcile an irreconcilable book, flings it at last 
down in despair, and declares, with tearful eyes, and hands up 
to Heaven, his revolt and recantation. If the truth is with all 
these, why should I take side with any one of them ? Some 
are called upon to preach : let them preach. Of these preachers 
there are somewhat too many, methinks, who fancy they have 
the gift. But we cannot all be parsons in chureh, that is clear. 
Some must sit silent and listen, or go to sleep mayhap. Have 
we not all our duties ? The head charity-boy blows the bel- 
lows ; the master canes the other boys in the organ-loft ; the 
clerk sings out Amen from the desk ; and the beadle with the 
staff opens the door for his Reverence, who rustles in silk up 
to the cushion. I won’t cane the boys, nay, or say Amen 
always, or act as the church’s champion or warrior, in the shape 
of the beadle with the staff ; but I will take off my hat in the 
place, and say my prayers there too, and shake hands with the 
clergyman as he steps on the grass outside. Don’t I know 
that his being there is a compromise, and that he stands before 
me an Act of Parliament ? That the church he occupies was 
built for other worship ? That the Methodist chapel is next 
door ; and that Bunyan the tinker is bawling out the tidings of 
damnation on the common hard by? Yes, I am a Sadducee ; 
and I take things as I find them, and the world, and the Acts 
of Parliament of the world, as they are ; and as I intend to 
take a wife, if I find one — not to be madly in love and prostrate 
at her feet like a fool — not to worship her as an angel, or to 
expect to find her as such — but to be good-natured to her, and 
courteous, expecting good-nature and pleasant society from her 
in turn. And so, George, if ever you hear of my marrying, 
depend on it, it won’t be a romantic attachment on my side : 
and if you hear of any good place under Government, I have 
no particular scruples that I know of, which would prevent me 
from accepting your offer.” 

“ O Pen, you scoundrel ! I know what you mean,” here 
Warrington broke out. “ This is the meaning of your skep- 
ticism, of your quietism, of your atheism, my poor fellow. 
You’re going to sell yourself, and Heaven help you ! You are 
going to make a bargain which will degrade you and make you 


PENDENNIS. 


644 

miserable for life, and there’s no use talking of it. If you are 
once bent on it, the devil won’t prevent you.” 

“ On the contrary, he’s on my side, isn’t he, George ? ” said 
Pen with a laugh. “ What good cigars these are ! Come 
down and have a little dinner at the Club ; the chef's in town, 
and he’ll cook a good one for me. No, you won’t ? Don’t 
be sulky, old boy, I’m going down to — to the country to- 
morrow.” 


CHAPTER LXII. 

WHICH ACCOUNTS PERHAPS FOR CHAPTER XXIII. 

The information regarding the affairs of the Clavefing 
family, which Major Pendennis had acquired through Strong, 
and by his own personal interference as the friend of the house, 
was such as almost made the old gentleman pause in any plans 
which he might have once entertained for his nephew’s benefit. 
To bestow upon Arthur a wife with two such fathers-in-law, as 
the two worthies whom the guileless and unfortunate Lady 
Clavering had drawn in her marriage ventures, was to benefit 
no man. And though the one, in a manner, neutralized the 
other, and the appearance of Amory or Altamont in public 
would be the signal for his instantaneous withdrawal and con- 
dign punishment, — for the fugitive convict had cut down the 
officer in charge of him, and a rope would be inevitably his end, 
if he came again under British authorities ; yet no guardian 
would like to secure for his ward a wife whose parent was to be 
got rid of in such a way; and the old gentleman’s notion 
always had been that Altamont, with the gallows before his eyes, 
would assuredly avoid recognition ; while, at the same time, by 
holding the threat of his discovery over Clavering, the latter, 
who would lose everything by Amory’s appearance, would be a 
slave in the hands of the person who knew so fatal a secret. 

But if the Begum paid Clavering’s debts many times more, 
her wealth would be expended altogether upon this irreclaim- 
able reprobate ; and her heirs, whoever they might be, would 
succeed but to an emptied treasury ; and Miss Amory, instead 
of bringing her husband a good income and a seat in Parlia- 
ment, would bring to that individual her person only, and her 
pedigree with that lamentable note of sus.per coll, at the nama 
of the last male of her line. 


PENDENNIS 


645 

There was, however, to the old schemer revolving these 
things in his mind, another course yet open ; the which will 
appear to the reader who may take the trouble to peruse a con- 
versation, which presently ensued, between Major Pendennis 
and the honorable Baronet the member for Clavering. 

When a man, under pecuniary difficulties, disappears from 
among his usual friends and equals, — dives out of sight, as it 
were, from the flock of birds in which he is accustomed to sail, 
it is wonderful at what strange and distant nooks he comes up 
again for breath. I have known a Pall Mall lounger and 
Rotten Row buck, of no inconsiderable fashion, vanish from 
amongst his comrades of the Clubs and the Park, and be dis- 
covered, very happy and affable, at an eighteen-penny ordinary 
in Billingsgate : another gentleman of great learning and wit, 
when out-running the constable (were I to say he was a literary 
man, some critics would vow that I intended to insult the 
literary profession), once sent me his address at a little public- 
house called the “ Fox under the Hill,” down a most darksome 
and cavernous archway in the Strand. Such a man, under 
such misfortunes, may have a house, but he is never in his 
house ; and has an address where letters may be left ; but only 
simpletons go with the hopes of seeing him. Only a few of the 
faithful know where he is to be found, and have the clue to his 
hiding-place. So, after the disputes with his wife, and the mis- 
fortunes consequent thereon, to find Sir Francis Clavering at 
home was impossible. “ Ever since I hast him for my book, 
which is fourteen pound, he don’t come home till three o’clock, 
and purtends to be asleep when I bring his water of a mornin’, 
and dodges hout when I’m down stairs,” Mr. Lightfoot re- 
marked to his friend Morgan ; and announced that he should 
go down to my Lady, and be butler there, and marry his old 
woman. In like manner, after his altercations with Strong, the 
Baronet did not come near him, and fled to other haunts, out 
of the reach of the Chevalier’s reproaches ; — out of the reach 
of conscience, if possible, which many of us try to dodge and 
leave behind us by changes of scene and other fugitive strata- 
gems. 

So, though the elder Pendennis, having his own ulterior 
object, was bent upon seeing Pen’s country neighbor and 
representative in Parliament, it took the Major no inconsider- 
able trouble and time before he could get him into such a con- 
fidential state and conversation, as were necessary for the ends 
which the Major had in view. For since the Major had been 
called in as a family friend, and had cognizance of Clavering’s 


PENDENNIS. 


646 

affairs, conjugal and pecuniary, the Baronet avoided him : as 
he always avoided all his lawyers, and agents, when there was 
an account to be rendered, or an affair of business to be dis- 
cussed between them ; and never kept any appointment but 
when its object was the raising of money. Thus, previous to 
catching this most shy and timorous bird, the Major made more 
than one futile attempt to hold him : — on one day it was a most 
innocent-looking invitation to dinner at Greenwich, to meet a 
few friends ; the Baronet accepted, suspected something, and 
did not come ; leaving the Major (who indeed proposed to 
represent in himself the body of friends) to eat his whitebait 
alone : — on another occasion the Major wrote and asked for 
a ten minutes’ talk, and the Baronet instantly acknowledged the 
note, and made the appointment at four o’clock the next day at 
Bays’s precisely (he carefully underlined the “ precisely ”) ; but 
though four o’clock came, as in the course of time and destiny 
it could not do otherwise, no Clavering made his appearance. 
Indeed, if he had borrowed twenty pounds of Pendennis, he 
could not have been more timid, or desirous of avoiding the 
Major; and the latter found that it was one thing to seek a 
man, and another to find him. 

Before the close of that day in which Strong’s patron had 
given the Chevalier the benefit of so many blessings before his 
face and curses behind his back, Sir Francis Clavering, who 
had pledged his word and his oath to his wife’s advisers to 
draw or accept no more bills of exchange, and to be content 
with the allowance which his victimized wife still awarded him, 
had managed to sign his respectable name to a piece of 
stamped paper, which the Baronet’s friend, Mr. Moss Abrams, 
had carried off, promising to have the bill “ done ” by a party 
with whose intimacy Mr. Abrams was favored. And it chanced 
that Strong heard of this transaction at the place where the 
writings had been drawn, — in fire back parlor, namely, of Mr. 
Santiago’s cigar-shop, where the Chevalier was constantly in 
the habit of spending an hour in the evening. 

“ He is at his old work again,” Mr. Santiago told his cus- 
tomer. “ He and Moss Abrams were in my parlor. Moss 
sent out my boy for a stamp. It must have been a bill for fifty 
pound. I heard the Baronet tell Moss to date it two months 
back. He will pretend that it is an old bill, and that he forgot 
it when he came to a settlement with his wife the other day. I 
dare say they will give him some more money now he is clear.” 
A man who has the habit of putting his unlucky name to 


PENDENNIS. 


647 

‘‘promises to pay” at six months, has the satisfaction of know* 
ing, too, that his affairs are known and canvassed, and his 
signature handed round, among the very worst knaves and 
rogues of London. 

Mr. Santiago’s shop was close by St. James’s Street and 
Bury Street, where we have had the honor of visiting our 
friend Major Pendennis in his lodgings. The Major was 
walking daintily towards his apartment, as Strong, burning 
with wrath and redolent of Havana, strode along the same 
pavement opposite to him. 

“ Confound these young men : how they poison everything 
with their smoke,” thought the Major. “ Here comes a fellow 
with mustaches and a cigar. Every fellow who smokes and 
wears mustaches is a low fellow. Oh ! it’s Mr. Strong. — I hope 
you are well, Mr. Strong ? ” and the old gentleman, making a 
dignified bow to the Chevalier, was about to pass into his 
house ; directing towards the lock of the door, with trembling 
hand, the polished door-key. 

We have said, that, at the long and weary disputes and con- 
ferences regarding the payment of Sir Francis Clavering’s last 
debts, Strong and Pendennis had both been present as friends 
and advisers of the Baronet’s unlucky family. Strong stopped 
and held out his hand to his brother negotiator, and old Pen- 
dennis put out towards him a couple of ungracious fingers. 

“ What is your good news ? ” said Major Pendennis, patron- 
izing the other still farther, and condescending to address to 
him an observation, for old Pendennis had kept such good 
company all his life, that he vaguely imagined he honored com- 
mon men by speaking to them. “ Still in town, Mr. Strong ? 
I hope I see you well.” 

“My news is bad news, sir,” Strong answered; “it con- 
cerns our friends at Tunbridge Wells, and I should like to 
talk to you about it. Clavering is at his old tricks again, Major 
Pendennis.” 

“ Indeed ! Pray do me the faV&r to come into my lodging,” 
cried the Major with awakened interest ; and the pair entered 
and took possession of his drawing-room. Here seated, Strong 
unburdened himself of his indignation to the Major, and spoke 
at large of Clavering’s recklessness and treachery. “No 
promises will bind him, sir,” he said. “ You remember when 
we met, sir, with my lady’s lawyer, how he wouldn’t be satisfied 
with giving his honor, but wanted to take his oath on his knees 
to his wife, and rang the bell for a Bible, and swore perdition 
on his soul if he ever would give another bill. Pie has been 


PENDENNIS. 


648 

signing one this very day, sir : and will sign as many more as 
you please for ready money : he will deceive anybody, his wife 
or his child, or his old friend, who has backed him a hundred 
times. Why, there’s a bill of his and mine will be due next 
week — ” 

“ I thought we had paid all — ” 

“Not that one,” Strong said, blushing. “He asked me 
not to mention it, and — and — I had half the money for that, 
Major. And they will be down on me. But I don’t care for it : 
I’m used to it. Its Lady Clavering that riles me. It’s a shame 
that that good-natured woman, who has paid him out of jail a 
score of times, should be ruined by his heartlessness. A parcel of 
billstealers, boxers, any rascals, get his money ; and he don’t 
scruple to throw an honest fellow over. Would you believe it, 
sir, he took money of Altamont — you know whom I mean ? ” 

“ Indeed ? of that singular man, who I think came tipsy 
once to Sir Francis’s house ? ” Major Pendennis said, with 
impenetrable countenance. “Who is Altamont, Mr. Strong? ” 

“ I am sure I don’t know, if you don’t know,” the Chevalier 
answered, with a look of surprise and suspicion. 

“ To tell you frankly,” said the Major, “ I have my suspi- 
cions. I suppose — mind, I only suppose — that in our friend 
Clavering’s life — who, between you and me, Captain Strong, 
we must own is about as loose a fish as any in my acquaintance 
— there are, no doubt, some queer secrets and stories which he 
would not like to have known : none of us would. And very 
likely this fellow, who calls himself Altamont, knows some 
story against Clavering, and has some hold on him, and gets 
money out of him on the strength of his information. I know 
some of the best men of the best families in England who are 
paying through the nose in that way. But their private affairs 
are no business of mine, Mr. Strong ; and it is not to be sup- 
posed that because I go and dine with a man, I pry into his 
secrets, or am answerable for all his past life. And so with 
our friend Clavering, I am most interested for his wife’s sake, 
and her daughter’s, who is a most charming creature : and 
when her ladyship asked me, I looked into her affairs, and 
tried to set them strait ; and shall do so again, you understand, 
to the best of my humble power and ability, if I can make my- 
self useful. And if I am called upon — you understand, if I am 
called upon — and — by the way, this Mr. Altamont, Mr. Strong? 
How is this Mr. Altamont ? I believe you are acquainted with 
him. Is he in town ? ” 

“ I don’t know that I am called upon to know where he is, 


PEND ENNIS. 


649 

Major Pendennis,” said Strong, rising and taking up his hat in 
dudgeon, for the Major’s patronizing manner and impertinence 
of caution offended the honest gentleman not a little. 

Pendennis’s manner altered at once from a tone of hauteur 
to one of knowing good-humor. “ Ah, Captain Strong, you are 
cautious too, I see ; and quite right, my good sir, quite right. 
We don’t know what ears walls may have, sir, or to whom we 
maybe talking ; and as a man of the world, and an old soldier, 
— an old and distinguished soldier, I have been told, Captain 
Strong, — you know very well that there is no use in throwing 
away your fire ; you may have your ideas, and I may put two 
and two together and have mine. But there are things which 
don’t concern him that many a man had better not know, eh, 
Captain ? and which I, for one, won’t know until I have reason 
for knowing them : and that I believe is your maxim too. 
With regard to our friend the Baronet, I think with you, it 
would be most advisable that he should be checked in his im- 
prudent courses ; and most strongly reprehend any man’s de- 
parture from his word, or any conduct of his which can give 
any pain to his family, or cause them annoyance in any way. 
That is my full and frank opinion, and I am sure it is yours.” 

“ Certainly,” said Mr. Strong, dryly. 

“ I am delighted to hear it ; delighted, that an old brother 
soldier should agree with me so fully. And I am exceedingly 
glad of the lucky meeting which has procured me the good for- 
tune of your visit. Good-evening. Thank you. Morgan, show 
the door to Captain Strong.” 

And Strong, preceded by Morgan, took his leave of Major 
Pendennis ; the Chevalier not a little puzzled at the old fellow’s 
prudence ; and the valet, to say the truth, to the full as much 
perplexed at his master’s reticence. For Mr. Morgan, in his 
capacity of accomplished valet, moved here and there in a 
house as silent as a shadow ; and, as it so happened, during 
the latter part of his master’s conversation with his visitor, 
had been standing very close to the door, and had overheard 
not a little of the talk between the two gentlemen, and a great 
deal more than he could understand. 

“Who is that Altamont? know anything about him and 
Strong ? ” Mr. Morgan asked of Mr. Lightfoot, on the next 
convenient occasion when they met at the Club. 

“ Strong’s his man of business, draws the Governor’s bills, 
and indosses ’em, and does his odd jobs and that ; and I sup- 
pose Altamont’s in it too,” Mr. Lightfoot replied. “ That kite- 
flying, you know, Mr. M., always takes two or three on ’em to 


PENDENNIS. 


650 

set the paper going. Altamont put the pot on at the Derby, 
and won a good bit of money. I wish the Governor could get 
some somewhere, and I could get my book paid up.” 

“ Do you think my Lady would pay his debts again ? ” 
Morgan asked. “ Find out that for me, Lightfoot, and I’ll 
make it worth your while, my boy.” 

Major Pendennis had often said with a laugh, that his valet 
Morgan was a much richer man than himself : and, indeed, by 
a long course of careful speculation, this wary and silent attend- 
ant had been amassing a considerable sum of money, during 
the years which he had passed in the Major’s service, where he 
had made the acquaintance of many other valets of distinction, 
from whom he had learned the affairs of their principals. When 
Mr. Arthur came into his property, but not until then, Morgan 
had surprised the young gentleman by saying that he had a 
little sum of money, some fifty or a hundred pound, which he 
wanted to lay out to advantage ; perhaps the gentlemen in the 
Temple, knowing about affairs and business and that, could 
help a poor fellow to a good investment ? Morgan would be 
very much obliged to Mr. Arthur, most grateful and obliged 
indeed, if Arthur could tell him of one. When Arthur laugh- 
ingly replied, that he knew nothing about money matters, and 
knew no earthly way of helping Morgan, the latter, with the 
utmost simplicity, was very grateful, very grateful indeed, to 
Mr. Arthur, and if Mr. Arthur should want a little money before 
his rents was paid, perhaps he would kindly remember that his 
uncle’s old and faithful servant had some as he would like to 
put out : and be most proud if he could be useful anyways to 
any of the family. 

The Prince of Fairoaks, who was tolerably prudent and had 
no need of ready money, would as soon have thought of borrow- 
ing from his uncle’s servant as of stealing the valet’s pocket- 
handkerchief, and was on the point of making some haughty 
reply to Morgan’s offer, but was checked by the humor of the 
transaction. Morgan a capitalist ! Morgan offering to lend to 
him! The joke was excellent. On the other. hand, the man 
might be quite innocent, and the proposal of money a simple 
offer of good-will. So Arthur withheld the sarcasm that was 
rising to his lips, and contented himself by declining Mr. 
Morgan’s kind proposal. He mentioned the matter to his 
uncle, however, and congratulated the latter on having such a 
treasure in his service. 

It was then that the Major said that he believed Morgan 


PENDENNIS. 


651 

had been getting devilish rich for a devilish long time ; in fact 
he had bought the house in Bury Street, in which his master 
was a lodger ; and had actually made a considerable sum of 
money from his acquaintance with the Clavering family, and 
his knowledge obtained through his master that the Begum 
would pay all her husband’s debts, by buying up as many of the 
Baronet’s acceptances as he could raise money to purchase. 
Of these transactions the Major, however, knew no more than 
most gentlemen do of their servants, who live with us all our 
days and are strangers to us : so strong custom is, and so 
pitiless the distinction between class and class. 

“ So he offered to lend you money, did he ? ” the elder 
Pendennis remarked to his nephew. “ He’s a dev’lish sly 
fellow, and a dev’lish rich fellow; and there’s many a nobleman 
would like to have such a valet in his service, and borrow from 
him too. And he ain’t a bit changed, Monsieur Morgan. He 
does his work just as well as ever — he’s always ready to my 
bell — steals about the room like a cat — he’s so dev’lishly at- 
tached to me, Morgan ! ” 

On the day of Strong’s visit, the Major bethought him of 
Pen’s story, and that Morgan might help him, and rallied the 
valet regarding his wealth with that free and insolent way which 
so high-placed a gentleman might be disposed to adopt towards 
so unfortunate a creature. 

“ I hear that you have got some money to invest, Morgan,” 
said the Major. 

It’s Mr. Arthur has been telling, hang him ! thought the 
valet. 

“ I’m glad my place is such a good one.” 

“ Thank you, sir — I’ve no reason to complain of my place 
nor of my master,” replied Morgan, demurely. 

“ You’re a good fellow : and I believe you are attached to 
me ; and I’m glad you get on well. And I hope you’ll be 
prudent, and not be taking a public-house or that kind of thing.” 

A public-house, thought Morgan — me in a public-house ! — 
the old fool ! — Dammy, if I was ten years younger I’d set in 
Parlyment before I died, that I would. — “ No, thank you kindly, 
sir. I don’t think of the public line, sir. And I’ve got my 
little savings pretty well put out, sir.” 

“You do a little in the discounting way, eh, Morgan ?” 

*' Yes, sir, a very little — I — I beg your pardon, sir — might I 
be so free as to ask a question ? ” 

“ Speak on, my good fellow,” the elder said, graciously. 

“ About Sir Francis Clavering’s paper, sir ? Do you think 


PENBENNIS. 


652 

foe’s any longer any good, sir ? Will my Lady pay on ’em any 
more, sir?” 

“ What, you’ve done something in that business already ? ” 

“Yes, sir, a little,” replied Morgan, dropping down his eyes. 
“ And I don’t mind owning, sir, and I hope I may take the 
liberty of saying, sir, that a little more would make me very 
comfortable if it turned out as well as the last.” 

“ Why, how much have you netted by him, in Gad’s name ? ” 
asked the Major. 

“ I’ve done a good bit, sir, at it : that I own, sir. Having 
some information, and made acquaintance with the fam’ly 
through your kindness, I put on the pot, sir.” 

“You did what? ” 

“ I laid my money on, sir — I got all I could, and borrowed, 
and bought Sir Francis’s bills ; many of ’em had his name, and 
the gentleman’s as is just gone out, Edward Strong, Esquire, 
sir : and of course I know of the blow hup and shindy as is 
took place in Grosvenor Place, sir ; and as I may as well make 
my money as another, I’d be very much obleeged to you if you’d 
tell me whether my Lady will come down any more.” 

Although Major Pendennis was as much surprised at this 
intelligence regarding his servant, as if he had heard that 
Morgan was a disguised Marquis, about to throw off his mask 
and assume his seat in the House of Peers ; and although he 
was of course indignant at the audacity of the fellow who had 
dared to grow rich under his nose, and without his cognizance ; 
yet he had a natural admiration for every man who represented 
money and success, and found himself respecting Morgan, and 
being rather afraid of that worthy, as the truth began to dawn 
upon him. 

“ Well, Morgan,” said he, “ I mustn’t ask how rich you are ; 
and the richer the better for your sake, I’m sure. And if I 
could give you any information that could serve you, I would 
speedily help you. But frankly, if Lady Clavering asks me 
whether she shall pay any more of Sir Francis’s debts I shall 
advise and hope she won’t, though I fear she will — and that is 
all I know. And so you are aware that Sir Francis is begin- 
ning again in his — eh — reckless and imprudent course ? ” 

“ At his old games, sir — can’t prevent that gentleman. He 
will do it.” 

“ Mr. Strong was saying that a Mr. Moss Abrams was the 
holder of one of Sir Francis Clavering’s notes. Do you know 
anything of this Mr. Abrams or the amount of the bill ? ” 

“ Don’t know the bill ; know Abrams quite well, sir.” 


TEND ENNIS. 


6 53 

“ I wish you would find out about it for me. And I wish 
you would find out where I can see Sir Francis Clavering, 
Morgan.” 

And Morgan said, “ Thank you, sir — yes, sir — I will, sir ; ” 
and retired from the room, as he had entered it, with his usual 
stealthy respect and quiet humility ; leaving the Major to muse 
and wonder over what he had just heard. 

The next morning the valet informed Major Pendennis that 
he had seen Mr. Abrams ; what was the amount of the bill that 
gentleman was desirous to negotiate ; and that the Baronet 
would be sure to be in the back parlor of the “ Wheel of For- 
tune ” Tavern that day at one o’clock. 

To this appointment Sir Francis Clavering was punctual, 
and as at one o’clock he sat in the parlor of the tavern in ques- 
tion, surrounded by spittoons, Windsor chairs, cheerful prints 
of boxers, trotting horses, and pedestrians, and the lingering of 
last night’s tobacco fumes — as the descendant of an ancient 
line sat in this delectable place accommodated with an old 
copy of “ Bell’s Life in London,” much blotted with beer, the 
polite Major Pendennis walked into the apartment. 

“ So it’s you, old boy ? ” asked the Baronet, thinking that 
Mr. Moss Abrams had arrived with the money. 

“ Flow do you do, Sir Francis Clavering ? I wanted to see 
you, and followed you here,” said the Major, at sight of whom 
the other’s countenance fell. 

Now that he had his opponent before him, the Major was 
determined to make a brisk and sudden attack upon him, and 
went into action at once. “I know,” he continued, “who is 
the exceedingly disreputable person for whom you took me, 
Claverirlg ; and the errand which brought you here.” 

“ It ain’t your business, is it ? ” asked the Baronet, with a 
sulky and deprecatory look. “ Why are you following me about, 
and taking the command and meddling in my affairs, Major 
Pendennis? I’ve never done you any harm, have I? I’ve 
never had your money. And I don’t choose to be dodged 
about in this way, and domineered over. I don’t choose it, and 
I won’t have it. If Lady Clavering has any proposal to make 
to me, let it be done in the regular way, and through the law- 
yers. I’d rather not have you.” 

“ I am not come from Lady Clavering,” the Major said, 
“ but of my own accord, to try and remonstrate with you, Claver- 
ing, and see if you can be kept from ruin. It is but a month 
ago that you swore on your honor, and wanted to get a Bible 


PEND ENNIS. 


<>54 

to strengthen the oath, that you would accept no more bills, but 
content yourself with the allowance which Lady Clavering gives 
you. All your debts were paid with that proviso, and you have 
broken it ; this Mr. Abrams has a bill of yours for sixty pounds.” 

“ It’s an old bill. I take my solemn oath it’s an old bill,” 
shrieked out the Baronet. 

“You drew it yesterday, and you dated it three months 
back purposely. By Gad, Clavering, you sicken me with lies, 
I can’t help telling you so. I’ve no patience with you, by Gad. 
You cheat everybody, yourself included. I’ve seen a deal of 
the world, but I never met your equal at humbugging. It’s my 
belief you had rather lie than not.” 

“ Have you come here, you old, old beast, to tempt me to 
— to pitch into you, and — knock your old head off ? ” said the 
Baronet, with a poisonous look of hatred at the Major. 

“ What, sir ? ” shouted out the old Major, rising to his feet 
and clasping his cane, and looking so fiercely, that the Baronet’s 
tone instantly changed towards him. 

“ No, no,” said Clavering, piteously ; “ I beg your pardon. 
I didn’t mean to be angry, or say anything unkind, only you’re 
so damned harsh to me, Major Pendennis. What is it you 
want of me ? Why have you been hunting me so ? Do you 
want money out of me too ? By Jove, you know I’ve not got a 
shilling,” — and so Clavering, according to his custom, passed 
from a curse into a whimper. 

Major Pendennis saw, from the other’s tone, that Clavering 
knew his secret was in the Major’s hands. 

“ I’ve no errand from anybody, or no design upon you,” 
Pendennis said, “ but an endeavor, if it’s not too late, to save 
you and your family from utter ruin, through the infernal reck- 
lessness of your courses. I knew your secret — ” 

“ I didn’t know it when I married her ; upon my oath I 

didn’t know it till the d d scoundrel came back and told me 

himself ; and it’s the misery about that which makes me so 
reckless, Pendennis ; indeed it is,” the Baronet cried, clasping 
his hands. 

“ I knew your secret from the very first day when I saw 
Amory come drunk into your dining-room in Grosvenor Place. 
I never forget faces. I remember that fellow in Sydney a con- 
vict, and he remembers me. I know his trial, the date of his 
marriage, and of his reported death in the bush. I could swear 
to him. And I know you are no more married to Lady Claver- 
ing than I am. I’ve kept your secret well enough, for I’ve not 
told a single soul that I know it, — not your wife, nor yourseli 
till now.” 


PENDENNIS. 


^55 

“ Poor Lady C., it would cut her up dreadfully,” whimpered 
Sir Francis ; “ and it wasn’t my fault, Major ; you know it 
wasn’t.” 

“ Rather than allow you to go on ruining her as you do, I 
will tell her, Clavering, and tell all the world too ; that is what 
I swear I will do, unless I can come to some terms with you, 
and put some curb on your infernal folly. By play, debt, and 
extravagance of all kinds, you’ve got through half your wife’s 
fortune, and that of her legitimate heirs, mind — her legitimate 
heirs. Here it must stop. You can’t live together. You’re 
not fit to live in a great house like Clavering ; and before three 
years more were over, would not leave a shilling to carry on. 
I’ve settled what must be done. You shall have six hundred 
a year ; you shall go abroad and live on that. You must give 
up Parliament, and get on as well as you can. If you refuse, I 
give you my word I’ll make the real state of things known to- 
morrow ; I’ll swear to Amory, who, when identified, will go back 
to the country from whence he came, and will rid the widow of 
you and himself together. And so that boy of yours loses at 
once all title to old Snell’s property, and it goes to your wife’s 
daughter. Ain’t I making myself pretty clearly understood ? ” 

“ You wouldn’t be so cruel to that poor boy, would you, 
Pendennis ? ” asked the father, pleading piteously ; “ hang it, 
think about him. He’s a nice boy ; though he’s dev’lish wild, 
I own — he’s dev’lish wild.” 

“ It’s you who are cruel to him,” said the old moralist. 
Why, sir, you’ll ruin him yourself inevitably in three years.” 

“Yes, but perhaps I won’t have such dev’lish bacl luck, you 
know; — the luck must turn: and I’ll reform, by Gad, I’ll re- 
form. And if you were to split on me, it would cut up my 
wife so ; you know it would, most infernally.” 

“ To be parted from you,” said the old Major, with a sneer; 
“you know she won’t live with you again.” 

“ But why can’t Lady C. live abroad, or at Bath, or at Tun- 
bridge, or at the doose, and I go on here ? ” Clavering con- 
tinued. “I like being here better than abroad, and I like 
being in Parliament. It’s dev’lish convenient being in Parlia- 
ment. There’s very few seats like mine left ; and if I gave it ’em, 
I should not wonder the Ministry would give me an island to 
govern, or some dev’lish good thing ; for you know I’m a gen- 
tleman of dev’lish good family, and have a handle to my name, 
and — and that sort of thing, Major Pendennis. Eh, don’t you 
see ? Don’t you think they’d give me something dev’lish good 
if I was to play my cards well ? And then, you know, I’d save 


PENDENNIS. 


656 

money, and be kept out of the way of the confounded hells and 
rouge et noir — and — and so I’d rather not give up Parliament, 
please.” For at one instant to hate and defy a man, at the 
next to weep before him, and at the next to be perfectly confi- 
dential and friendly with him, was not an unusual process with 
our versatile-minded Baronet. 

“ As for your seat in Parliament,” the Major said, with 
something of a blush on his cheek, and a certain tremor, which 
the other did not see, “ you must part with that, Sir Francis 
Clavering, to — to me.” 

“ What ! are you going into the House, Major Pendennis ? ” 

“No — not I; but my nephew, Arthur, is a very clever 
fellow, and would make a figure there : and when Clavering had 
two Members, his father might very likely have been one ; and 
— and I should like Arthur to be there,” the Major said. 

“ Dammy, does he know it, too ? ” cried out Clavering. 

“Nobody knows anything out of this room,” Pendennis 
answered ; “ and if you do this favor for me, I hold my tongue. 
If not, I’m a man of my word, and will do what I have said.” 

“ I say, Major,” said Sir Francis, with a peculiarly humble 
smile, “ you — you couldn’t get me my first quarter in advance, 
could you, like the best of fellows ? You can do anything with 
Lady Clavering ; and, upon my oath, I’ll take up that bill of 
Abrams. The little dam scoundrel, I know he’ll do me in the 
business — he always does ; and if you could do this for me, 
we’d see, Major.” 

“ And I think your best plan would be to go down in Sep- 
tember to Clavering to shoot, and take my nephew with you, 
and introduce him. Yes, that will be the best time. And we 
will try and manage about the advance.” (Arthur may lend 
him that, thought old Pendennis. Confound him, a seat in 
Parliament is worth a hundred and fifty pounds.) “ And, 
Clavering, you understand, of course, my nephew knows noth- 
ing about this business. You have a mind to retire : he is a 
Clavering man and a good representative for the borough ; you 
introduce him, and your people vote for him — you see.” 

“When can you get me the hundred and fifty, Major? 
When shall I come and see you ? Will you be at home this 
evening or to-morrow morning ? Will you have anything here ? 
They’ve got some dev’lish good bitters in the bar. I often 
have a glass of bitters, it sets one up so.” 

The old Major would take no refreshment ; but rose and 
took his leave of the Baronet, who walked with him to the door 
of the “Wheel of Fortune,” and then strolled into the bar, 


PENDENNIS . 


6 57 

where he took a glass of gin-and-bitters with the landlady there : 
and a gentleman connected with the ring (who boarded at the 
“ Wheel of F.”) coming in, he and Sir Francis Clavering and 
the landlord talked about the fights and the news of the sport- 
ing world in general ; and at length Mr. Moss Abrams arrived 
with the proceeds of the Baronet’s bill, from which his own 
handsome commission was deducted, and out of the remainder 
Sir Francis “ stood ” a dinner at Greenwich to his distinguished 
friend, and passed the evening gayly at Vauxhall. 

Meanwhile Major Pendennis, calling a cab in Piccadilly, 
drove to Lamb Court, Temple, where he speedily was closeted 
with his nephew in deep conversation. 

After their talk they parted on very good terms, and it was 
in consequence of that unreported conversation, whereof the 
reader nevertheless can pretty well guess the bearing, that 
Arthur expressed himself as we have heard in the colloquy with 
Warrington, which is reported in the last chapter. 

When a man is tempted to do a tempting thing, he can find 
a hundred ingenious reasons for gratifying his liking: and 
Arthur thought very much that he would like to be in Parlia- 
ment, and that he would like to distinguish himself there, and 
that he need not care much what side he took, as there was 
falsehood and truth on every side. And on this and on other 
matters he thought he would compromise with his conscience, 
and that Sadduceeism was a very convenient and good-humored 
profession of faith. 


CHAPTER LXIII. 

PHILLIS AND CORYDON. 

On a picturesque common in the neighborhood of Tunbridge 
Wells, Lady Clavering had found a pretty villa, whither she 
retired after her conjugal disputes at the end of that unlucky 
London season. Miss Amory, of course, accompanied her 
mother, and Master Clavering came home for the holidays, 
with whom Blanche’s chief occupation was to fight and quarrel. 
But this was only a home pastime, and the young school-boy 
was not fond of home sports. He found cricket, and horses, 
and plenty of friends at Tunbridge. The good-natured 

42 


PENDENNIS. 


658 

Begum’s house was filled with a constant society of young 
gentlemen of thirteen, who ate and drank much too copiously 
of tarts and champagne, who rode races on the lawn, and 
frightened the fond mother, who smoked and made themselves 
sick, and the dining-room unbearable to Miss Blanche. She 
did not like the society of young gentlemen of thirteen. 

As for that fair young creature, any change as long as it 
was change was pleasant to her ; and for a week or two she 
would have liked poverty and a cottage, and bread-and-cheese ; 
and, for a night, perhaps, a dungeon and bread-and-water, and 
so the move to Tunbridge was by no means unwelcome to her. 
She wandered in the woods, and sketched trees and farm- 
houses ; she read French novels habitually ; she drove into 
Tunbridge Wells pretty often, and to any play, or ball, or con-, 
juror, or musician who might happen to appear in the place ; 
she slept a great degl ; she quarrelled with mamma and 
Frank during the morning; she found the little village school 
and attended it, and first fondled the girls and thwarted 
the mistress, then scolded the girls and laughed at the 
teacher ; she was constant at church, of course. It was 
a pretty little church, of immense antiquity — a little Anglo-Nor- 
man bijou , built the day before yesterday, and decorated with 
all sorts of painted windows, carved saints’ heads, gilt scripture 
texts, and open pews. Blanche began forthwith to work a 
most correct high-church altar-cover for the church. She passed 
for a saint with the clergyman for a while, whom she quite took 
in, and whom she coaxed, and wheedled, and fondled so art- 
fully, that poor Mrs. Smirke, who at first was charmed with 
her, then bore with her, then would hardly speak to her, was al- 
most mad with jealousy. Mrs. Smirke was the wife of our old 
friend Smirke, Pen’s tutor and poor Helen’s suitor. He had 
consoled himself for her refusal with a young lady from Clap- 
ham whom his mamma provided. When the latter died, our 
friend’s views became every day more and more pronounced. 
He cut off his coat collar, and let his hair grow over his 
back. He rigorously gave up the curl which he used to 
sport on his forehead, and the tie of his neck-cloth of 
which he was rather proud. He went without any tie at all. 
He went without dinner on Fridays. Jde read the Roman 
Hours, and intimated that he was ready to receive confessions 
in the vestry. The most harmless creature in the world, he 
was denounced as a black and most dangerous Jesuit and 
Papist, by Muffin of the Dissenting chapel, and Mr. Simeon 
Knight at the old church. Mr. Smirke had built his chapel of 


PENDENNIS . 


6 59 

*ase with the money left him by his mother at Clapham. Lord ! 
lord ! what would she have said to hear a table called an altar ! 
to see candlesticks on it ! to get letters signed on the Feast of 
Saint So-and-so, or the Vigil of Saint What-do-you-call-’em ! 
All these things did the boy of Clapham practise ; his faithful 
wife following him. But when Blanche had a conference of 
near two hours in the vestry with Mr. Smirke, Belinda paced 
up and down on the grass, where there were only two little 
grave-stones as yet; she wished that she had a third there : 
only, only he would offer very likely to that creature, who had 
infatuated him in a fortnight. No, she would retire ; she 
would go into a convent, and profess and leave him. Such 
bad thoughts had Smirke’s wife and his neighbors regarding 
him ; these, thinking him in direct correspondence with the 
Bishop of Rome ; that, bewailing errors to her even more 
odious and fatal ; and yet our friend* meant no earthly harm. 
The post office never brought him any letters from the Pope ; 
he thought Blanche, to be sure, at first the most pious, gifted, 
right-thinking, fascinating person he had ever met ; and her 
manner of singing the Chants delighted him — but after a while 
he began to grow rather tired of Miss Amory, her ways and 
graces grew stale somehow ; then he was doubtful about Miss 
Amory; then she made a disturbance in his school, lost her 
temper, and rapped the children’s fingers. Blanche inspired 
this admiration and satiety, somehow, in many men. She tried 
to please them, and flung out all her graces at once ; came 
down to them with all her jewels on, all her smiles, and cajol- 
eries, and coaxings, and ogles. Then she grew tired of them 
and of trying to please them, and never having cared about 
them, dropped them : and the men grew tired of her, and drop- 
ped her too. It was a happy night for Belinda when Blanche 
went away ; and her husband, with rather a blush and a sigh, 
said “ he had been deceived in her ; he had thought her en- 
dowed with many precious gifts, he feared they were mere 
tinsel ; he thought she had been a right-thinking person, he 
feared she had merely made religion an amusement — she cer- 
tainly had quite lost her temper -to the schoolmistress, and beat 
Polly Rucker’s knuckles cruelly.” Belinda flew to his arms, 
there was no question about the grave or the veil any more. 
Pie tenderly embraced her on the forehead. “ There is none 
like thee, my Belinda,” he said, throwing his fine eyes up to 
the ceiling, “ precious among women ! ” As for Blanche, from 
the instant she lost sight of him and Belinda, she never thought 
or cared about either any more. 


66o 


PENDENNIS. 


But when Arthur went down to pass a few days at Tun- 
bridge Wells with the Begum, this stage of indifference had not 
arrived on Miss Blanche’s part or on that of the simple clergy- 
man. Smirke believed her to be an angel and wonder of a 
woman. Such a perfection he had never seen, and sat listen- 
ing to her music in the summer evenings, open-mouthed, rapt 
in wonder, tealess, and bread-and-butterless. Fascinating as 
he had heard the music of the opera to be — he had never but 
once attended an exhibition of that nature (which he mentioned 
with a blush and a sigh — it was on that day when he had ac- 
companied Helen and her son to the play at Chatteris) — he 
could not conceive anything more delicious, more celestial, he 
had almost said, than Miss Amory’s music. She was a most 
gifted being : she had a precious soul : she had the most re- 
markable talents — to all outward seeming, the most heavenly 
disposition, &c., &c. It .was in this way that, being then at the 
height of his own fever and bewitchment for Blanche, Smirke 
discoursed to Arthur about her. 

The meeting between the two old acquaintances had been 
very cordial. Arthur loved anybody who loved his mother ; 
Smirke could speak on .that theme with genuine feeling and 
emotion. They had a hundred things to tell each other of 
what had occurred in their lives. “ Arthur would perceive,” 
Smirke said, “ that his — his views on church matters had de- 
veloped themselves since their acquaintance.” Mrs. Smirke, a 
most exemplary person, seconded them with all her endeavors. 
He had built this little church on his mother’s demise, who had 
left him provided with a sufficiency of worldly means. Though 
in the cloister himself, he had heard of Arthur’s reputation. 
He spoke in the kindest and most saddened tone ; he held his 
eyelids down, and bowed his fair head on one side. Arthur 
was immensely amused with him ; with his airs ; with his follies 
and simplicity ; with his blank stock and long hair ; with his 
real goodness, kindness, friendliness of feeling. And his 
praises of Blanche pleased and surprised our friend not a little, 
and made him regard her with eyes of particular favor. 

The truth is, Blanche was very glad to see Arthur; as one 
is glad to see an agreeable man in the country, who brings 
down the last news and stories from the great City ; who can 
talk better than most country folks, at least can talk that dar- 
ling London jargon, so dear and indispensable to London peo- 
ple, so little understood by persons out of the world. The first 
day Pen came down, he kept Blanche laughing for hours after 
dinner. She sang her x songs with redoubled spirit. She did 


PENDENNIS. 


66l 


not scold her mother : she fondled and kissed her, to the 
honest Begum’s surprise. When it came to bedtime, she said, 
“Deja!” with the prettiest air of regret possible; and was 
really quite sorry to go to bed, and squeezed Arthur’s hand 
quite fondly. He on his side gave her pretty palm a very cor- 
dial pressure. Our young gentleman was of that turn, that 
eyes very moderately bright dazzled him. 

“ She is very much improved,” thought Pen, looking out 
into the night, “ very much. I suppose the Begum won’t mind 
my smoking with the window open. She’s a jolly good old 
woman, and Blanche is immensely improved. I liked her 
manner with her mother to-night. I liked her laughing way 
with that stupid young cub of a boy, whom they oughtn’t to 
allow to get tipsy. She sang those little verses very prettily ; 
they were devilish pretty verses too, though I say it who 
shouldn’t say it.” And he hummed a tune which Blanche had 
put to some verses of his own. “ Ah ! what a fine night ! How 
jolly a cigar is at night ! How pretty that little Saxon church 
looks in the moonlight ! I wonder what old Warrington’s 
doing ? Yes, she’s a dayvlish nice little thing, as my uncle 
says.” 

“ Oh, heavenly ! ” Here broke out a voice from a clematis- 
covered casement near — a girl’s voice : it was the voice of the 
author of Mes Larmes. 

Pen burst into a laugh. “ Don’t tell about my smoking,” 
he said, leaning out of his own window. 

“ Oh ! go on ! I adore it,” cried the lady of Mes Larmes. 
“ Heavenly night ! Heavenly, heavenly moon ! but I must 
shut my window and not talk to you, on account of les mceurs 1 
How droll they are, les moeurs / Adieu.” And Pen began to 
sing the Good-Night to Don Basilio. 

"The next day they were walking in the fields together, 
laughing and chattering — the gayest pair of friends. They 
talked about the days of their youth, and Blanche was prettily 
sentimental. They talked about Laura, dearest Laura — Blanche 
had loved her as a sister : was she happy with that old Lady 
Rockminster ? Wouldn’t she come and stay with them at Tun- 
bridge ? Oh, what walks they would take together! What 
songs they would sing — the old, old songs. Laura’s voice was 
splendid/ Did Arthur — she must call him Arthur — remember 
the songs they sang in the happy old days, now he was grown 
such a great man, and had such a succesl &c., &c. 

And the day after, which was enlivened with a happy ramble 
through the woods to Penshurst, and a sight of that pleasant 


6 62 


PENDENNIS. 


park and hall, came that conversation with the curate which 
we have narrated, and which made our young friend think more 
and more. 

“ Is she all this perfection ? ” he asked himself. “ Has she 
become serious and religious ? Does she tend schools and 
visit the poor ? Is she kind to her mother and brother ? Yes, 
I am sure of that : I have seen her.” And walking with his 
old tutor over his little parish, and going to visit his school, it 
was with inexpressible delight that Pen found Blanche seated 
instructing the children, and fancied to himself how patient she 
must be, how good-natured, how ingenuous, how really simple 
in her tastes, and unspoiled by the world. 

“ And do you really like the country ? ” he asked her, as 
they walked together. 

“ I should like never to see that odious City again. Oh, 
Arthur — that is, Mr. — well Arthur, then — one’s good thoughts 
grow up in these sweet woods and calm solitudes, like those 
flowers which won’t bloom in London, you know. The gardener 
comes and changes our balconies once a week. I don’t think 
I shall bear to look London in the face again — its odious, 
smoky, brazen face ! But, heigho ! ” 

“ Why that sigh, Blanche ? ” 

“ Never-mind why.” 

“Yes, I do mind why. Tell me, tell me everything.’ 

“ I wish you hadn’t come down ;” and a second edition of 
Mes Soupirs came out. 

“You don’t want me, Blanche ? ” 

“ I don’t want you to go away. I don’t think this house 
will be very happy without you, and that’s why I wish that you 
never had come.” 

Mes Soupirs were here laid aside, and Mes Larmes had 
begun. 

Ah ! What answer is given to those in the eyes of a young 
woman ? What is the method employed for drying them ? 
What took place ? O ringdoves and roses, O dews and wild- 
flowers, O waving greenwoods and balmy airs of summer ! 
Here were two battered London rakes, taking themselves in 
for a moment, and fancying that they were in love with each 
other, like Phillis and Corydon ! 

When one thinks of country houses and country walks, one 
wonders that any man is left unmarried. 


PENDENNIS. 


663 


CHAPTER LXIV 

TEMPTATION 

Easy and frank-spoken as Pendennis commonly was with 
Warrington, how came it that Arthur did not inform the friend 
and depositary of all his secrets, of the little circumstances 
which had taken place at the villa near Tunbridge Wells ? He 
talked about the discovery of his old tutor Smirke, freely 
enough, and of his wife, and of his Anglo-Norman church, and 
of his departure from Clapham to Rome ; but, when asked 
about Blanche, his answers were evasive or general ; he said 
she was a good-natured clever little thing, that rightly guided 
she might make no such bad wife after all, but that he had for 
the moment no intention of marriage, that his days of romance 
were over, that he was contented with his present lot, and so 
forth. 

In the mean time there came occasionally to Lamb Court, 
Temple, pretty little satin envelopes, superscribed in the neatest 
handwriting, and sealed with one of those admirable ciphers, 
which, if Warrington had been curious enough to watch his 
friend’s letters, or indeed if the cipher had been decipherable, 
would have shown George that Mr. Arthur was in correspond- 
ence with a young lady whose initials were B. A. To these 
pretty little compositions, Mr. Pen replied in his best and 
gallantest manner ; with jokes, with news of the town, with 
points of wit, nay, with pretty little verses very likely, in reply 
to the versicles of the Muse of “ Mes Larmes.” Blanche we 
know rhymes with “ branch,” and “ stanch,” and “launch,” and 
no doubt a gentleman of Pen’s ingenuity would not forego these 
advantages of position, and would ring the pretty little changes 
upon these pleasing notes. Indeed we believe that those love- 
verses of Mr. Pen’s, which had such a pleasing success in the 
“ Rose-leaves,” that charming Annual edited by Lady Violet 
Lebas, and illustrated by portraits of the female nobility by 
the famous artist Pinkney, were composed at this period of our 
hero’s life ; and were first addressed to Blanche, per post, 
before they figured in print, cornets as it were to Pinkney’s 
pictorial garland. 

“ Verses are all very well,” the elder Pendennis said, who 
found Pen scratching down one of these artless effusions at 


PENDENNIS . 


664 

the Club as he was waiting for his dinner ; “ and letter-writing if 
mamma allows it, and between such old country friends of 
course there may be a correspondence, and that sort of thing 
— but mind, Pen, and don’t commit yourself, my boy. For 
who knows what the doose may happen ? The best way is to 
make your letters safe. I never wrote a letter in all my life 
that would commit me, and demmy, sir, I have had some 
experience of women.” And the worthy gentleman, growing 
more garrulous and confidential with his nephew as he grew 
older, told many affecting instances' of the evil results conse- 
quent upon this want of caution to many persons in “ society ; ” 
— how from using too ardent expressions in some poetical 
notes to the widow Naylor, young Spoony had subjected him- 
self to a visit of remonstrance from the widow’s brother, 
Colonel Flint ; and thus had been forced into a marriage with 
a woman old enough to be his mother : how when Louisa 
Salter had at length succeeded in securing young Sir John 
Bird, Hopwood, of the Blues, produced some letters which 
Miss S. had written to him, and caused a withdrawal on Bird’s 
part, who afterwards was united to Miss Stickney, of Lyme 
Regis, &c. The Major, if he had not reading, had plenty of 
observation, and could back his wise saws with a multitude of 
modern instances, which he had acquired in a long and careful 
perusal of the great book of the world. 

Pen laughed at the examples, and blushing a little at his 
uncle’s remonstrances, said that he would bear them in mind 
and be cautious. He blushed, perhaps, because he had borne 
them in mind ; because he was cautious : because in his letters 
to Miss Blanche he had from instinct, or honesty perhaps, 
refrained from any avowals which might compromise him. 
“ Don’t you remember the lesson I had, sir, in Lady Mirabel’s 
— Miss Fotheringay’s affair? I am not to be caught again, 
uncle,” Arthur said with mock frankness and humility. Old 
Pendennis congratulated himself and his nephew heartily on 
the latter’s prudence and progress, and was pleased at the 
position which Arthur was taking as a man of the world. 

No doubt, if Warrington had been consulted, his opinion 
would have been different : and he would have told Pen that 
the boy’s foolish letters were better than the man’s adroit com- 
pliments and slippery gallantries ; that to win the woman he 
loves, only a knave or a coward advances under cover, with 
subterfuges, and a retreat secured behind him : but Pen spoke 
not on this matter to Mr. Warrington, knowing pretty well that 
he was guilty, and what his friend’s verdict would be. 


PEND ENNIS. 


665 

Colonel Altamont had not been for many weeks absent on 
his foreign tour — Sir Francis Clavering having retired mean- 
while into the country pursuant to his agreement with Major 
Pendennis — when the ills of fate began to fall rather suddenly 
and heavily upon the sole remaining partner of the little firm 
of Shepherd’s Inn. When Strong, at parting with Altamont, 
refused the loan proffered by the latter in the fulness of his 
purse and the generosity of his heart, he made such a sacrifice 
to conscience and delicacy as caused him many an after-twinge 
and pang ; and he felt — it was not very many hours in his life 
he had experienced the feeling — that in this juncture of his 
affairs he had been too delicate and too scrupulous. Why 
should a fellow in want refuse a kind offer kindly made ? Why 
should a thirsty man decline a pitcher of water from a friendly 
hand, because it was a little soiled ? Strong’s conscience smote 
him for refusing what the other had fairly come by, and gener- 
ously proffered : and he thought ruefully, now it was too late, 
that Altamont’s cash would have been as well in his pocket as 
in that of the gambling-house proprietor at Baden or Ems, 
with whom his Excellency would infallibly leave his Derby 
winnings. It was whispered among the tradesmen, bill-dis- 
counters, and others who had commercial dealings with Captain 
Strong, that he and the Baronet had parted company, and that 
the Captain’s “paper” was henceforth of no value. The 
tradesmen, who had put a wonderful confidence in him hitherto, 
— for who could resist Strong’s jolly face and frank and honest 
demeanor ? : — now began to pour in their bills with a cowardly 
mistrust and unanimity. The knocks at the Shepherd’s Inn 
chambers’ door were constant, and tailors, bootmakers, pastry- 
cooks who had furnished dinners, in their own persons, or by 
the boys their representatives, held levees on Strong’s stairs. 
To these were added one or two persons of a less clamorous 
but far more sly and dangerous sort, — the young clerks of 
lawyers, namely, who lurked about the Inn, or concerted with 
Mr. Campion’s young man in the chambers hard by, having in 
their dismal pocket-books copies of writs to be served on 
Edward Strong, requiring him to appear on an early day next 
term before our Sovereign Lady the Queen, and answer to 
&c., &c. 

From this invasion of creditors, poor Strong, who had not 
a guinea in his pocket, had, of course, no refuge but that of the 
Englishman’s castle, into which he retired, shutting the outer 
and inner door upon the enemy, and not quitting his stronghold 
until after nightfall. Against this outer barrier the foe used to 


666 


PENDENNIS. 


come and knock and curse in vain, whilst the Chevalier peeped 
at them from behind the little curtain which he had put over 
the orifice of his letter-box ; and had the dismal satisfaction of 
seeing the faces of furious clerk and fiery dun, as they dashed 
up against the door and retreated from it. But as they could 
not be always at his gate, or sleep on his staircase, the enemies 
of the Chevalier sometimes left him free. 

Strong, when so pressed by his commercial antagonists, was 
not quite alone in his defence against them, but had secured 
for himself an ally or two. His friends were instructed to com- 
municate with him by a system of private signals : and they 
thus kept the garrison from starving by bringing in necessary 
supplies, and kept up Strong’s heart and prevented him from 
surrendering, by visiting him and cheering him in his retreat. 
Two of Ned’s most faithful allies were Huxter and Miss Fanny 
Bolton : when hostile visitors were prowling about the Inn, 
Fanny’s little sisters w T ere taught a particular cry or jodel \ which 
they innocently whooped in the court ; when Fanny and Huxter 
came up to visit Strong, they archly sang this same note at his 
door : when that barrier was straightway opened, the honest 
garrison came out smiling, the provisions and the pot of porter 
were brought in, and in the society of his faithful friends the 
beleaguered one passed a comfortable night. There are some 
men who could not live under this excitement, but Strong was 
a brave man, as we have said, who had seen service and never 
lost heart in peril. 

But besides allies, our general had secured for himself, 
under difficulties, that still more necessary aid, — a retreat. It 
has been mentioned in a former part of this history, how Messrs. 
Costigan and Bows lived in the house next door to Captain 
Strong, and that the window of one of their rooms was not very 
far off the kitchen-window which was situated in the upper 
story of Strong’s chambers. A leaden water-pipe and gutter 
served for the two ; and Strong, looking out from his kitchen 
one day, saw that he could spring with great ease up to the sill 
of his neighbor’s window, and clamber up the pipe which com- 
municated from one to the other. He had laughingly shown 
this i^sfuge to his chum, Altamont ; and they had agreed that it 
would be as well not to mention the circumstance to Captain 
Costigan, whose duns were numerous, and who would be con- 
stantly flying down the pipe into their apartments if this way of 
escape were shown to him. 

But now that the evil days were come, Strong made use of 
the passage, and one afternoon burst in upon Bows and Cos* 


PENDENNIS 


66 7 

tigan with his jolly face, and explained that the enemy was in 
waiting on his staircase, and that he had taken this means of 
giving them the slip. So while Mr. Mark’s aides de-camp were 
in waiting in the passage of No. 3, Strong walked down the 
steps of No. 4, dined at the Albion, went to the play, and re- 
turned home at midnight, to the astonishment of Mrs. Bolton 
and Fanny, who had not seen him quit his chambers and could 
not conceive how he could have passed the line of sentries. 

Strong bore this siege for some weeks with admirable spirit 
and resolution, and as only such an old and brave soldier would, 
for the pains and privations which he had to endure were enough 
to depress any man of ordinary courage ; and what vexed and 
“ riled ” him (to use his own expression) was the infernal in- 
difference and cowardly ingratitude of Clavering, to whom he 
wrote letter after letter, which the Baronet never acknowledged 
by a single word, or by the smallest remittance, though a five- 
pound note, as Strong said, at that time would have been a 
fortune to him. 

But better days were in store for the Chevalier, and in the 
midst of his despondency and perplexities there came to him a 
most welcome aid. “ Yes, if it hadn’t been for this good fellow 
here,” said Strong ; “ for a good fellow you are, Altamont, my 
boy, and hang me if I don’t stand by you as long as I live ; I 
think, Pendennis, it would have been all up with Ned Strong. 
It was the fifth week of my being kept a prisoner, for I couldn’t 
be always risking my neck across that water-pipe, and taking 
my walks abroad through poor old Cos’s window, and my spirit 
was quite broken, sir — dammy, quite beat, and I was thinking 
of putting an end to myself, and should have done it in another 
week, when who should drop down from heaven but Altamont ! ” 

“ Heaven ain’t exactly the place, Ned,” said Altamont. “ I 
came from Baden-Baden,” said he, “ and I’d had a deuced 
lucky month there, that’s all.” 

“ Well, sir, he took up Mark’s bill, and he paid the other 
fellows that were upon me, like a man, sir, that he did,” said 
Strong, enthusiastically. 

“ And I shall be very happy to stand a bottle of claret for 
this company, and as many more as the company chooses,” 
said Mr. Altamont, with ‘a blush. “ Hallo ! waiter, bring us a 
magnum of the right sort, do you hear ? And we’ll drink our 
healths all round, sir — and may every good fellow like Strong 
find another good fellow to stand by him at a pinch. That’s 
my sentiment, Mr. Pendennis, though I don’t like your name.” 


668 


PENDENNIS. 


“ No ! And why ?” asked Arthur. 

Strong pressed the Colonel’s foot under the table here ; and 
Altamont, rather excited, filled up another bumper, nodded to 
Pen, drank off his wine, and said, “ He was a gentleman, and 
that was sufficient, and they were all gentlemen.” 

The meeting between these “all gentlemen ” took place at 
Richmond, whither Pendennis had gone to dinner, and where 
he found the Chevalier and his friend at table in the coffee- 
room. Both of the latter were exceedingly hilarious, talkative, 
and excited by wine, and Strong, who was an admirable story- 
teller, told the story of his own siege, and adventures and 
escapes with great liveliness and humor, and described the talk 
of the sheriff’s officers at his door, the pretty little signals of 
Fanny, the grotesque exclamations of Costigan when the Chev- 
alier burst in at his window, and his final rescue by Altamont, 
in a most graphic manner, and so as greatly to interest his 
hearers. 

“ As for me, it’s nothing,” Altamont said. “ When a ship’s 
paid off, a chap spends his money, you know, And it’s the 
fellers at the black and red at Baden-Baden that did it. I won 
a good bit of money there, and intend to win a good bit more, 
don’t I, Strong ? I’m going to take him with me. I’ve got a 
system. I’ll make his fortune-, I tell you. I’ll make your for- 
tune, if you like — dammy, everybody’s fortune. But what I’ll 
do, and no mistake, boys, I promise you. I’ll put in for that 
little Fanny. Dammy, sir, what do you think she did? She 
had two pound, and I’m blest if she didn’t go and lend it to 
Ned Strong ! Didn’t she, Ned ? Let’s drink her health.” 

“ With all my heart,” said Arthur, and pledged this toast 
with the greatest cordiality. 

Mr. Altamont then began, with the greatest volubility, and 
at great length, to describe his system. He said that it was in- 
fallible, if played with coolness ; that he had it from a chap at 
Baden, who had lost by it, it was true, but because he had not 
capital enough ; if he could have stood one more turn of the 
wheel, he would have had all his money back ; that he and 
several more chaps were going to make a bank, and try it ; and 
that he would put every shilling he was worth into it, and had 
come back to this country, for the express purpose of fetching 
away his money, and Captain Strong ; that Strong should play 
for him : that he could trust Strong and his temper much better 
than he could his own, and much better than Bloundell-Bloundell 
or the Italian that “ stood in.” As he emptied his bottle, the 
Colonel described at full length all his plans and prospects to 


PENDENNIS \ 669 

Pen, who was interested in listening to his story, and the con- 
fessions of his daring and lawless good-humor. 

“ I met that queer fellow Altamont the other day,” Pen said 
to his uncle, a day or two afterwards. 

“ Altamont ? What Altamont ? There’s Lord Westport’s 
son,” said the Major. 

“ No, no ; the fellow who came tipsy into Clavering’s dining- 
room one day when we were there,” said the nephew, laughing; 
“ and he said he did not like the name of Pendennis, though he 
did me the honor to think that I was a good fellow.” 

“ I don’t know any man of the name of Altamont, I give 
you my honor,” said the impenetrable Major ; “ and as for 
your acquaintance, I think the less you have to do with him 
the better, Arthur.” 

Arthur laughed again. “ He is going to quit the country, 
and make his fortune by a gambling system. He and my 
amiable college acquaintance, Bloundell, are partners, and the 
Colonel takes out Strong with him as aide-de-camp. What is 
it that binds the Chevalier and Clavering, I wonder ? ” 

“ I should think, mind you, Pen, I should think — but of 
course I have only the idea — that there has been something in 
Clavering’s previous life which gives these fellows and some 
others a certain power over him ; and if there should be such a 
secret, which is no affair of ours, my boy, dammy, I say, it 
ought to be a lesson to a man to keep himself straight in life, 
and not to give any man a chance over him.” 

“ Why, I think you have some means of persuasion over 
Clavering, uncle, or why should he give me that seat in Parlia- 
ment ? ” 

“ Clavering thinks he ain’t fit for Parliament,” the Major 
answered. “ No more he is. What’s to prevent him from 
putting you or anybody else into his place if he likes ? Do you 
think that the Government or the Opposition would make any 
bones about accepting the seat if he offered it to them ? Why 
should you be more squeamish than the first men, and the most 
honorable men, and men of the highest birth and position in 
the country, begad ? ” The^ Colonel had an answer of this kind 
to most of Pen’s objections, and Pen accepted his uncle’s replies, 
not so much because he believed them, but because he wished 
to believe them. We do a thing — which of us has not ? — not 
because “ everybody does it,” but because we like it ; and our 
acquiescence, alas ! proves not that everybody is right, but that 
we and the rest of the world are poor creatures alike. 


670 ' PENDENNIS. 

At his next visit to Tunbridge, Mr. Pen did not forget to 
amuse Miss Blanche with the history which he had learned at 
Richmond of the Chevalier’s imprisonment, and of Altamont’s 
gallant rescue. And after he had told his tale in his usual 
satirical way, he mentioned with praise and emotion little 
Fanny’s generous behavior to the Chevalier, and Altamont’s 
enthusiasm in her behalf. 

Miss Blanche was somewhat jealous, and a good deal 
piqued and curious about Fanny. Among the many confi- 
dential little communications which Arthur made to Miss 
Amory in the course of their delightful rural drives and their 
sweet evening walks, it may be supposed that our hero would 
not forget a story so interesting to himself, and so likely to be 
interesting to her, as that of the passion and care of the poor 
little Ariadne of Shepherd’s Inn. His own part in that drama 
he described, to do him justice, with becoming modesty ; the 
moral which he wished to draw from the tale being one in 
accordance with his usual satirical mood, viz., that women get 
over their first loves quite as easily as men do (for the fair 
Blanche, in their intimes conversations, did not cease to twit 
Mr. Pen about his notorious failure in his own virgin attach- 
ment to the Fotheringay), and, number one being withdrawn, 
transfer themselves to number two without much difficulty. 
And poor little Fanny was offered up in sacrifice as an instance 
to prove this theory. What griefs she had endured and sur- 
mounted, what bitter pangs of hopeless attachment she had 
gone through, what time it had taken to heal those wounds of 
the tender little bleeding heart, Mr. Pen did not know, or 
perhaps did not choose to know : for he was at once modest 
and doubtful about his capabilities as a conqueror of hearts, 
and averse to believe that he had executed any dangerous 
ravages on that particular one, though his own instance and 
argument told against himself in this case ; for if, as he said, 
Miss Fanny was by this time in love with her surgical adorer, 
who had neither good looks nor good manners, nor wit nor 
anything but ardor and fidelity to recommend him, must she 
not, in her first sickness of the love-complaint, have had a 
serious attack, and suffered keenly for a man, who had certainly 
a number of the showy qualities which Mr. Huxter wanted ? 

“You wicked odious creature,” Miss Blanche said, “ I believe 
that you are enraged with Fanny for being so impudent as to 
forget you, and that you are actually jealous of Mr. Huxter.” 
Perhaps Miss Amory was right, as the blush which came in 
spite of himself and tingled upon Pendennis’s cheek (one of 


PENDENNIS. 


671 

those blows with which a man’s vanity is constantly slapping 
his face), proved to Pen that he was angry to think he had 
been superseded by such a rival. By such a fellow as that ! 
without any conceivable good quality ! Oh, Mr. Pendennis ! 
(although this remark does not apply to such a smart fellow as 
you) if Nature had not made that provision for each sex in the 
credulity of the other, which sees good qualities where none 
exist, good looks in donkeys’ ears, wit in their numskulls, and 
music in their bray, there would not have been near so much 
marrying and giving in marriage as now obtains, and as is 
necessary for the due propagation and continuance of the noble 
race to which we belong ! 

“ Jealous or not,” Pen said, “ and, Blanche, I don’t say no, 
I should have liked Fanny to come to a better end than that. 
I don’t like histories that end in that cynical way ; and when 
we arrive at the conclusion of the story of a pretty girl’s passion, 
to find such a figure as Huxter’s at the last page of the tale. 
Is all life a compromise, my lady fair, and the end of the battle 
of love an ignoble surrender ? Is the search for the Cupid 
which my poor little Psyche pursued in the darkness — the god 
of her soul’s longing — the god of the blooming cheek and 
rainbow pinions — to result in Huxter, smelling of tobacco and 
gallipots? I wish, though I don’t see it in life, that people 
could be like Jenny and Jessamy, or my lord and lady Clemen- 
tina in the story-books and fashionable novels, and at once 
under the ceremony, and, as it were, at the parson’s benediction, 
become perfectly handsome and good and happy ever after.” 

“ And don’t you intend to be good and happy, pray, Mon- 
sieur le Misanthrope — and are you very discontented with your 
lot — and will your marriage be a compromise — (asked the 
author of “ Mes Larmes,” with a charming moue) — and is your 
Psyche an odious vulgar wretch? You wicked satirical creature, 
I can’t abide you ! You take the hearts of young things, play 
with them, and fling them away with scorn. You ask for love 
and trample on it. You — you make me cry, that you do, 
Arthur, and — and don’t — and I won't be consoled in that way 
• — and I think Fanny was quite right in leaving such a heartless 
creature.” 

“ Again, I don’t say no,” said Pen, looking very gloomily at 
Blanche, and not offering by any means to repeat the attempt 
at consolation, which had elicited that sweet monosyllable 
“ don’t ” from the young lady. “ I don’t think I have much of 
what people call heart; but I don’t profess it. I made my 
venture when I was eighteen, and lighted my lamp and went in 


PENDENNTS. 


672 

search of Cupid. And what was my discovery of love ! — a 
vulgar dancing-woman. I failed, as everybody does, almost 
everybody ; only it is luckier to fail before marriage than after.” 

“ Merci du choix , Monsieur ,” said the Sylphide, making a 
curtsey. 

“ Look, my little Blanche,” said Pen, taking her hand, and 
with his voice of sad good-humor ; “ at least I stoop to no 
flatteries.” 

“ Quite the contrary,” said Miss Blanche. 

“ And tell you no foolish lies, as vulgar men do. Why 
should you and I, with our experience, ape romance and dis- 
semble passion ? I do not believe Miss Blanche Amory to be 
peerless among the beautiful, nor the greatest poetess, nor the 
most surpassing musician, any more than I believe you to be 
the tallest woman in the whole world — like the giantess whose 
picture we saw as we rode through the fair yesterday. But if I 
don’t set you up as a heroine, neither do I offer you your very 
humble servant as a hero. But I think you are — well, there I 
think you are very sufficiently good-looking.” 

“Merci” Miss Blanche said with another curtsey. 

“ I think you sing charmingly. I’m sure you’re clever. I 
hope and believe that you are good-natured, and that you will 
be companionable.” 

“ And so provided I bring you a certain sum of money and 
a seat in Parliament, you condescend to fling to me your royal 
pocket-handkerchief,” said Blanche. “ Que d ’ honneur ! We 
used to call your Highness the Prince of Fairoaks. What an 
honor to think that I am to be elevated to the throne, and to 
bring the seat in Parliament as backsheesh to the sultan ! I 
am glad I am clever, and that I can play and sing to your 
liking ; my songs will amuse my lord’s leisure.” 

“ And if thieves are about the house,” said Pen, grimly 
pursuing the simile, “ forty besetting thieves in the shape of 
lurking cares and enemies in ambush and passions in arms, my 
Morgiana will dance round me with a tambourine, and kill all 
my rogues and thieves with a smile. Won’t she ? ” But Pen 
looked as if he did not believe that she would. “ Ah, Blanche,” 
he continued after a pause, ‘'don’t be angry ; don’t be hurt at 
my truth-telling. Don’t you see that I always take you at youi 
word ? You say you will be a slave and dance — I say, dance. 
You say, ‘I take you with what you bring : ’ I say, ‘ I take you 
with what you bring.’ To the necessary deceits and hypocrisies 
of our life, why add any that are useless and unnecessary ? If 
I offer myself to you because I think we have a fair chance of 


PENDENNIS. 


673 

being happy together, and because by your helt> I may get for 
both of us a good place and a not undistinguished name, why 
ask me to feign raptures and counterfeit romance, in which 
neither of us believe ? Do you want me to come wooing in a 
Prince Prettyman’s dress from the masquerade warehouse, and 
to pay you compliments like Sir Charles Grandison ? Do you 
want me to make you verses as in the days when we were — • 
when we were children ? I will if you like, and sell them to 
Bacon and Bungay afterwards. Shall I feed my pretty princess 
with bonbons ? ” 

“ Mais f adore les bonbons, moi,” said the little Sylphide, 
with a queer piteous look. 

“ I can buy a hatful at Fortnum and Mason’s for a guinea. 
And it shall have its bonbons, its pootty little sugar-plums, that 
it shall,” Pen said with a bitter smile. “ Nay, my dear, nay my 
dearest little Blanche, don’t cry. Dry the pretty eyes, I can’t 
bear that ; ” and he proceeded to offer that consolation which 
the circumstance required, and which the tears, the genuine 
tears of vexation, which now sprang from the angry eyes of 
the author of l ' Mes Larmes ” demanded. 

The scornful and sarcastic tone of Pendennis quite fright- 
ened and overcame the girl. “ I — I don’t want your consola- 
tion. I — I never was — so — spoken to bef — by any of my — my 
• — by anybody ” — she sobbed out, with much simplicity. 

“Anybody /” shouted out Pen, with a savage burst of 
laughter, and Blanche blushed one of the most genuine blushes 
which her cheek had ever exhibited, and she cried out, “ Oh, 
Arthur, vons etes un homme terrible !” She felt bewildered, 
frightened, oppressed, the worldly little flirt who had been 
playing at love for the last dozen years of her life, and yet not 
displeased at meeting a master. 

“ Tell me, Arthur,” she said, after a pause in this strange 
love-making, “ why does Sir Francis Clavering give up his seat 
in Parliament ? ” 

“ Au fait , why does he give it to me ? ” asked Arthur, now 
blushing in his turn. 

“ You always mock me sir,” she said. “ If it is good to be 
in Parliament, why does Sir Francis go out?” 

“ My uncle has talked him over. He always said that you 
were not sufficiently provided for. In the — the family disputes, 
when your mamma paid his debts so liberally, it was stipulated, 
I suppose, that you — that is, that I— that is, upon my word, I 
don’t know why he goes out of Parliament,” Pen said, with 
rather a forced laugh. “ You see, Blanche, that you and J are 

43 


PEND ENNIS. 


674 

two good little children, and that this marriage has been ar- 
ranged for us by our mammas and uncles, and that we must 
be obedient, like a good little boy and girl.” 

So, when Pen went to London, he sent Blanche a box of 
bonbons, each sugar-plum of which was wrapped up in ready- 
made French -verses, of the most tender kind ; and, besides, 
despatched to her some poems of his own manufacture, quite 
as artless and authentic ; and it was no wonder that he did not 
tell Warrington what his conversations with Miss Amory had 
been, of so delicate a sentiment were they, and of a nature so 
necessarily private. 

And if, like many a worse and better man, Arthur Penden- 
nis, the widow’s son, was meditating an apostasy, and going to 
sell himself to — we all know whom, — at least the renegade did 
not pretend to be a believer in the creed to which he was ready 
to swear. And if every woman and man in this kingdom, who 
has sold her or himself for money or position, as Mrs. Penden- 
nis "was about to do, would but purchase a copy of his me- 
moirs, what tons of volumes Messrs. Smith, Elder and Co. 
would sell 1 


CHAPTER LXV. 

IN WHICH PEN BEGINS HIS CANVASS. 

Melancholy as the great house at Clavering Park had 
been in the days before his marriage, when its bankrupt pro- 
prietor was a refugee in foreign lands, it was not much more 
cheerful now when Sir Francis Clavering came to inhabit it. 
The greater part of the mansion was shut up, and the Baronet 
only occupied a few of the rooms on the ground floor, where 
his housekeeper and her assistant from the lodge gate waited 
upon the luckless gentleman in his forced retreat, and cooked 
a part of the game which he spent the dreary mornings in 
shooting. Lightfoot, his man, had passed over to my Lady’s 
service ; and, as Pen was informed in a letter from Mr. Smirke, 
who performed the ceremony, had executed his prudent inten- 
tion of marrying Mrs. Bonner, my Lady’s woman, who, in her 
mature years, was stricken with the charms of the youth, and 
endowed him with her savings and her elderly person. To be 


PENDENNIS. 


675 

landlord and landlady cf the “ Clavering Arms” was the ambi- 
tion of both of them ; and it was agreed that they were to re- 
main in Lady Clavering’s service until quarter-day arrived* 
when they were to take possession of their hotel. Pen gra- 
ciously promised that he would give his election dinner there, 
when the Baronet should vacate his seat in the young man’s 
favor ; and, as it had been agreed by his uncle, to whom 
Clavering seemed to be able to refuse nothing, Arthur came 
down in September on a visit to Clavering Park, the owner of 
which was very glad to have a companion who would relieve 
his loneliness, and perhaps would lend him a little ready money. 

Pen furnished his host with these desirable supplies a couple 
of days after he had made his appearance at Clavering : and no 
sooner were these small funds in Sir Francis’s pocket, than the 
latter found he had business at Chatteris and the neighboring 

watering-places, of which shire boasts many, and went off to 

see to his affairs, which were transacted, as might be supposed, 
at the country race-grounds and billiard-rooms. Arthur could 
live alone well enough, having many mental resources and 
amusements which did not require other persons’ company : he 
could walk with the game-keeper of a morning, and for the even- 
ings there were plenty of books and occupation for a literary 
genius like Mr. Arthur, who required but a cigar and a sheet of 
paper or two to make the night pass away pleasantly. In truth, 
in two or three days he had found the society of Sir Francis 
Clavering perfectly intolerable ; and it was with a mischievous 
eagerness and satisfaction that he offered Clavering the little 
pecuniary aid which the latter according to his custom solicited ; 
and supplied him with the means of taking flight from his own 
house. 

Besides, our ingenious friend had to ingratiate himself with 
the townspeople of Clavering, and with the voters of the borough 
which he hoped to represent ; and he set himself to this task 
with only the more eagerness, remembering how unpopular he 
had before been in Clavering, and determined to vanquish the 
odium which he had inspired amongst the simple people there. 
His sense of humor made him delight in his task. Naturally 
rather reserved and silent in public, he became on a sudden as 
frank, easy, jovial, as Captain Strong. He laughed with every- 
body who would exchange a laugh with him, shook hands right 
and left, with what may be certainly called a dexterous cor- 
diality ; made his appearance at the market-day and the farmers’ 
ordinary ; and, in fine, acted like a consummate hypocrite, and 
as gentlemen of the highest birth and most spotless integrity act 


PENDE NNIS. 


676 

when they wish to make themselves agreeable to their constit- 
uents, and have some end to gain of the country folks. How 
is it that we allow ourselves not to be deceived, but to be in- 
gratiated so readily by a glib tongue, a ready laugh, and a frank 
manner ? We know, for the most part, that it is false coin, and 
we take it : we know that it is flattery, which it costs nothing 
to distribute to everybody, and we had rather have it than be 
without it. Friend Pen went about at Clavering, laboriously 
simple and adroitly pleased, and quite a different being from 
the scornful and rather sulky young dandy whom the inhabitants 
remembered ten years ago. 

The Rectory was shut up. Doctor Portman was gone, with 
his gout and his family, to Harrogate ; an event which Pen de- 
plored very much in a letter to the Doctor, in which, in a few 
kind and simple words, he expressed his regret at not seeing 
his old friend, whose advice he wanted and whose aid he 
might require some day : but Pen consoled himself for the 
Doctor’s absence, by making acquaintance with Mr. Simcoe, 
the opposition preacher, and with the two partners of the cloth- 
factory at Chatteris, and with the Independent preacher there, 
all of whom he met at the Clavering Athenaeum, which the 
Liberal party had set up in accordance with the advanced spirit 
of the age, and perhaps in opposition to the aristocratic old 
reading-room, into which the “ Edinburgh Review ” had once 
scarcely got an admission, and where no tradesmen were 
allowed an entrance. He propitiated the younger partner of 
the cloth-factory, by asking him to dine in a friendly way at the 
Park; he complimented -the Honorable Mrs. Simcoe with hares 
and partridges from the same quarter, at a request to read her 
husband’s last sermon ; and being a little unwell one day, the 
rascal took advantage of the circumstance to show his tongue 
to Mr. Huxter, who sent him medicines and called the next 
morning. How delighted old Pendennis would have been with 
his pupil ! Pen himself was amused with the sport in which he 
was engaged, and his success inspired him with a wicked good- 
humor. 

And yet, after walking out of Clavering of a night, after 
“ presiding ” at a meeting of the Athenaeum, or working through 
an evening with Mrs. Simcoe, who, with her husband, was awed 
by the young Londoner’s reputation, and had heard of his social 
successes ; as he passed over the old familiar bridge of the 
rushing Brawl, and heard that well-remembered sound of waters 
beneath, and saw his own cottage of Fairoaks among the trees, 
their darkling outlines clear against the starlit sky, different 


PENDENNIS. 


677 

thoughts no doubt came to the young man’s mind, and awakened 
pangs of grief and shame there. There still used to be a 
light in the windows of the room which he remembered so well, 
and in which the Saint who loved him had passed so many 
hours of care and yearning and prayer. He turned away his 
gaze from the faint light which seemed to pursue him with its 
wan reproachful gaze, as though it was his mother’s spirit 
watching and warning. How clear the night was ! How keen 
the stars shone ; how ceaseless the rush of the flowing waters ; 
the old home trees whispered, and waved gently their dark 
heads and branches over the cottage roof. Yonder, in the 
faint starlight glimmer, was the terrace where, as a boy, he 
walked of summer evenings, ardent and trustful, unspotted, 
untried, ignorant of doubts or passions ; sheltered as yet from 
the world’s contamination in the pure and anxious bosom of 
love. * * * The clock of the near town tolling midnight, with a 
clang, disturbs our wanderer’s reverie, and sends him onward 
towards his night’s resting-place, through the lodge into 
Clavering avenue, and under the dark arcades of the rustling 
limes. 

When he sees the cottage the next time, it is smiling in 
sunset ; those bedroom windows are open where the light was 
burning the night before ; and Pen’s tenant, Captain Stokes, 
of the Bombay Artillery (whose mother, old Mrs. Stokes, lives 
in Clavering), receives his landlord’s visit with great cordiality: 
shows him over the grounds and the new pond he has made in 
the back garden from the stables ; talks to him confidentially 
about the roof and chimneys, and begs Mr. Pendennis to name 
a day when he will do himself and Mrs. Stokes the pleasure to, 
&c. Pen, who has been a fortnight in the country, excuses 
himself for not having called sooner upon the Captain by 
frankly owning that he had not the heart to do it. “ I under- 
stand you, sir,” the Captain says ; and Mrs. Stokes, who had 
slipped away at the ring of the bell (how odd it seemed to Pen 
to ring the bell !), comes down in her best gown, surrounded by 
her children. The young ones clamber about Stokes : the boy 
jumps into an arm-chair. It was Pen’s father’s arm-chair ; and 
Arthur remembers the days when he would as soon have 
thought of mounting the king’s throne as of seating himself in 
that arm-chair. He asks Miss Stokes — she is the very image 
of her mamma — if she can play ? He should like to hear a 
tune on that piano. She plays. He hears the notes of the 
old piano once more, enfeebled by age, but he does not listen 
to the player. He is listening to Laura singing as in the days 


PENDENNIS. 


678 

of their youth, and sees his mother bending and beating time 
over the shoulder of the girl. 

The dinner at Fairoaks given in Pen’s honor by his tenant, 
and at which old Mrs. Stokes, Captain Glanders, Squire Hob- 
nell, and the clergyman and his lady, from Tinckleton, were 
present, was very stupid and melancholy for Pen, until the 
waiter from Clavering (who aided the Captain’s stable-boy and 
Mrs. Stokes’s butler) whom Pen remembered as a street boy, 
and who was now indeed barber in that place, dropped a plate 
over Pen’s shoulder, on which Mr. Hobnell (who also employed 
him) remarked, “ I suppose, Hodson, your hands are slippery 
with bear’s-grease. He’s always dropping the crockery about, 
that Hodson is — haw, haw ! ” On which Hodson blushed, 
and looked so disconcerted, that Pen burst out laughing ; and 
good-humor and hilarity were the order of the evening. For 
the second course, there was a hare and partridges top and bot- 
tom, and when after the withdrawal of the servants Pen said to 
the Vicar of Tinckleton, " I think, Mr. Stooks, you should have 
asked Hodson to cut the hare” the joke was taken instantly by 
the clergyman, who was followed in the course of a few minutes 
by Captain Stokes and Glanders, and by Mr. Hobnell, who ar- 
rived rather late, but with an immense guffaw. 

While Mr. Pen was engaged in the country in the above 
schemes, it happened that the lady of his choice, if not of his 
affections, came up to London from the Tunbridge villa bound 
upon shopping expeditions or important business, and in com- 
pany of old Mrs. Bonner, her mother’s maid, who had lived 
and quarrelled with Blanche many times since she was an 
infant, and who now being about to quit Lady Clavering’s 
service for the hymeneal state, was anxious like a good soul to 
bestow some token of respectful kindness upon her old and 
young mistress before she quitted them altogether, to take her 
post as the wife of Lightfoot, and landlady of the “ Clavering 
Arms.” 

The honest woman took the benefit of Miss Amory’s taste to 
make the purchase which she intended to offer her ladyship ; 
and requested the fair Blanche to choose something for herself 
that should be to her liking, and remind her of her old nurse 
who had attended her through many a wakeful night, and 
eventful teething, and childish fever, and who loved her like a 
child of her own a’most. These purchases were made, and as 
the nurse insisted on buying an immense Bible for. Blanche, the 
young lady suggested that Bonner should purchase a large 


PENDENNIS. £ 79 

“ Johnson’s Dictionary” for her mamma. Each of the two 
women might certainly profit by the present made to her. 

Then Mrs. Bonner invested money in some bargains in 
linen-drapery, which might be useful at the “ Clavering Arms,’ 
and bought a red and yellow neck-handkerchief, which Blanche 
could see at once was intended for Mr. Lightfoot. Younger 
than herself by at least five-and-twenty years, Mrs. Bonner re- 
garded that youth with a fondness at once parental and con- 
jugal, and loved to lavish ornaments on his person, which 
already glittered with pins, rings, shirt-studs, and chains and 
seals, purchased at the good creature’s expense. 

It was in the Strand that Mrs. Bonner made her purchases, 
aided by Miss Blanche, who liked the fun very well, and when 
the old lady had bought everything that she desired, and was 
leaving the shop, Blanche, with a smiling face, and a sweet 
bow to one of the shopmen, said, “ Pray, sir, will you have the 
kindness to show us the way to Shepherd’s Inn.” 

Shepherd’s Inn was but a few score of yards off, Oldcastle 
Street was close by, the elegant young shopman pointed out 
the turning which the young lady was to take, and she and her 
companion walked off together. 

“ Shepherd’s Inn ! what can you want in Shepherd’s Inn, 
Miss Blanche ? ” Bonner inquired. “ Mr. Strong lives there. 
Do you want to go and see the Captain ? ” 

“ I should like to see the Captain very well. I like the 
Captain ; but it is not him I want. I want to see a dear little 
good girl, who was very kind to— to Mr. Arthur when he was so 
ill last year, and saved his life almost; and I want to thank 
her, and ask her if she would like anything. I looked out 
several of my dresses on purpose this morning, Bonner ! ” and 
she looked at Bonner as if she had a right to admiration, and 
had performed an act of remarkable virtue. Blanche, indeed, 
was very fond of sugar-plums ; she would have fed the poor 
upon them, when she had had enough, and given a country-girl 
a ball dress when she had worn it and was tired of it. 

“ Pretty girl — pretty young woman ! ” mumbled Mrs. Bon- 
ner. “ I know / want no pretty young women to come about 
Lightfoot,” and in imagination she peopled the “ Clavering 
Arms ” with a harem of the most hideous chambermaids and 
barmaids. 

Blanche, with pink and blue, and feathers, and flowers, and 
trinkets, and a shot silk dress, and a wonderful mantle, and a 
charming parasol, presented a vision of elegance and beauty 
such as bewildered the eyes of Mrs. Bolton, who was scrubbing 


68o 


PENDENNIS. 


the lodge floor of Shepherd’s Inn, and caused Betsy-Jane and 
Ameliar-Ann to look with delight. 

Blanche looked on them with a smile of ineffable sweetness 
and protection ; like Rowena going to see Rebecca ; like Marie 
Antoinette visiting the poor in the famine ; like the Marchion- 
ess of Carabas alighting from her carriage and four at a pau- 
per-tenant’s door, and taking from John No. II., the packet of 
Epsom salts for the invalid’s benefit, carrying it with her own 
imperial hand into the sick-room — Blanche felt a queen step- 
ping down from her throne to visit a subject, and enjoyed all 
the bland consciousness of doing a good action. 

“ My good woman ! I want to see Fanny — Fanny Bolton ; 
is she here ? ” 

Mrs. Bolton had a sudden suspicion, from the splendor of 
Blanche’s appearance, that it must be a play-actor, or some- 
thing worse. 

“ What do you want with Fanny, pray ? ” she asked. 

“ I am Lady Clave ring’s daughter — you have heard of Sir 
Francis Clavering ? And I wish very much indeed to see 
Fanny Bolton.” 

“ Pray step in, Miss — Betsy-Jane, where’s Fanny ? ” 

Betsy-Jane said Fanny had gone into No. 3 staircase, on 
which Mrs. Bolton said she was probably in Strong’s rooms, and 
bade the child go and see if she was there. 

“ In Captain Strong’s rooms ! oh, let us go to Captain 
Strong’s rooms,” cried out Miss Blanche. “ I know him very 
well. You dearest little girl, show us the way to Captain 
Strong ! ” cried out Miss Blanche, for the floor reeked with the 
recent scrubbing, and the goddess did not like the smell of 
brown soap. 

And as they passed up the stairs, a gentleman by the name 
of Costigan, who happened to be swaggering about the court, 
and gave a very knowing look with his “ oi ” under Blanche’s 
bonnet, remarked to himself, “That’s a devilish foine gyurll, 
bedad, goan up to Strong and Altamont : they’re always having 
foine gyurlls up their stairs.” 

“ Hallo — hwhat’s that ? ” he presently said, looking up at 
the windows : from which some piercing shrieks issued. 

At the sound of the voice of a distressed female the intrepid 
Cos rushed up the stairs as fast as his old legs would carry him, 
being nearly overthrown by Strong’s servant, who was descend- 
ing the stairs. Cos found the outer door of Strong’s chambers 
open, and began to thunder at the knocker. After many and 
fierce knocks, the inner door was partially unclosed, and Strong’s 
head appeared. 


PENDENNIS. 68 1 

“It’s oi, me boy. H what’s that noise, Sthrong?” asked 
Costigan. 

“ Go to the d — ” was the only answer, and the door was 
shut on Cos’s venerable red nose : and he went down stairs 
muttering threats at the indignity offered to him, and vowing 
that he would have satisfaction. In the meanwhile the reader, 
more lucky than Captain Costigan, will have the privilege of 
being made acquainted with the secret which was withheld from 
that officer. 

It has been said of how generous a disposition Mr. Alta- 
mont was, and when he was well supplied with funds, how 
liberally he spent them. Of a hospitable turn, he had no 
greater pleasure than drinking in company with other people ; 
so that there was no man more welcome at Greenwich and 
Richmond than the Emissary of the Nawaub of Lucknow. 

Now it chanced that on the day when Blanche and Mrs. 
Bonner ascended the staircase to Strong’s room in Shepherd’s 

Inn, the Colonel had invited Miss Delaval of the Theatre 

Royal, and her mother, Mrs. Hodge, to a little party down the 
river, and it had been agreed that they were to meet at Cham- 
bers, and thence walk down to a port in the neighboring Strand 
to take water. So that when Mrs. Bonner and Mes Larmes 
came to the door, where Grady, Altamont’s servant, was stand- 
ing, the domestic said, “ Walk in, ladies,” with the utmost affa- 
bility, and led them into the room, which was arranged as it 
they had been expected there. Indeed, two bouquets of 
flowers, bought at Covent Garden that morning, and instances 
of the tender gallantry of Altamont, were awaiting his guests 
upon the table. Blanche smelt at the bouquet, and put her 
pretty little dainty nose into it, and tripped about the room, 
and looked behind the curtains, and at the books and prints, 
and at the plan of Clavering estate hanging upon the wall ; and 
had asked the servant for Captain Strong, and had almost for- 
gotten his existence and the errand about which she had come, 
namely, to visit Fanny Bolton ; so pleased was she with the new 
adventure, and the odd, strange, delightful, droll little idea of 
being in a bachelor’s chambers in a queer old place in the 
City ! 

Grady meanwhile, with a pair of ample varnished boots, had 
disappeared into his master’s room. Blanche had hardly the 
leisure to remark how big the boots were, and how unlike Mr. 
Strong’s. 

“ The women’s come ” said Grady, helping his master to 
the boots. 


68a 


PENDENNIS. 


“ Did you ask ’em if they would take a glass of anything ? * 
asked Altamont. 

Grady came out — “ He says, will you take anything to 
drink ? ” the domestic asked of them ; at which Blanche, amused 
with the artless question, broke out into a pretty little laugh, 
and asked of Mrs. Bonner, “ Shall we take anything to drink ? ” 

“ Well, you may take it or lave it,” said Mr. Grady, who 
thought his offer slighted, and did not like the contemptuous 
manners of the new-comers, and so left them. 

“ Will we take anything to drink ? ” Blanche asked again : 
and again began to laugh. 

“ Grady,” bawled out a voice from the chamber within : — a 
voice that made Mrs. Bonner start. 

Grady did not answer : his song was heard from afar off, 
from the kitchen, his upper room, where Grady was singing at 
his work. 

“ Grady, my coat ! ” again roared the voice from within. 

“Why, that is not Mr. Strong’s voice,” said the Sylphide, 
still half laughing. “ Grady my coat ! — Bonner, who is Grady 
my coat ? We ought to go away.” 

Bonner still looked quite puzzled at the sound of the voice 
which she had heard. 

The bedroom door here opened, and the individual w r ho had 
called out “ Grady, my coat,” appeared without the garment in 
question. 

He nodded to the women, and walked across the room. “ I 
beg your pardon, ladies. Grady, bring my coat down, sir ! 
Well, my dears, it’s a fine day, and we’ll have a jolly lark at — ” 

He said no more ; for here Mrs. Bonner, who had been 
looking at him with scared eyes, suddenly shrieked out, “ Amory ! 
Amory ! ” and fell back screaming and fainting in her chair. 

The man, so apostrophized, looked at the woman an instant, 
and, rushing up to Blanche, seized her and kissed her. “ Yes, 
Betsy,” he said, “ by G — it is me. Mary Bonner knew me. 
W T hat a fine gal we’ve grown ! But it’s a secret, mind. I’m 
dead, though I’m your father. Your poor mother don’t know 
it. WTat a pretty gal we’ve grown ! Kiss me — kiss me close, 
my Betsy ! D it, I love you : I’m your old father.” 

Betsy or Blanche looked quite bewildered ; and began to 
scream too — once, twice, thrice ; and it was her piercing shrieks 
which Captain Costigan heard as he walked the court below. 

At the sound of these shrieks the perplexed parent clasped 
his hands (his wristbands were open, and on one brawny arm 
you could see letters tattooed in blue), and, rushing to his 


PENDENNIS. 


683 

apartment, came back with an eau-de-Cologne bottle from his 
grand silver dressing-case, with the fragrant contents of which 
he began liberally to sprinkle Bonner and Blanche. 

The screams of these women brought the other occupants 
of the chambers into the room : Grady from his kitchen, and 
Strong from his apartment in the upper story. The latter at 
once saw from the aspect of the two women what had occurred. 

“ Grady, go and wait in the court,” he said, “ and if anybody 
comes — you understand me.” 

“ Is it the play-actress and her mother ? ” said Grady. 

“Yes — confound you — say that there’s nobody in Chambers, 
and the party’s off for to-day.” 

“ Shall I say that, sir ? and after I bought them bokays ? ” 
asked Grady of his master. 

“Yes,” said Amory, with a stamp of his foot; and Strong 
going to the door, too, reached it just in time to prevent the 
entrance of Captain Costigan, who had mounted the stair. 

The ladies from the theatre did not have their treat to 
Greenwich, nor did Blanche pay her visit to Fanny Bolton on 
that day. And Cos, who took occasion majestically to inquire 
of Grady what the mischief was, and who was crying ? — had for 
answer that ’twas a woman, another of them, and that they 
were, in Grady’s opinion, the cause of ’most all the mischief in 
the world. 


CHAPTER LXVI. 

IN WHICH PEN BEGINS TO DOUBT HIS ELECTION. 

Whilst Pen, in his own county, was thus carrying on his 
selfish plans and parliamentary schemes, news came to him 
that Lady Rockmin’ster had arrived at Baymouth, and had 
brought with her our friend Laura. At the announcement that 
Laura his sister was near him, Pen felt rather guilty. His wish 
was to stand higher in her esteem, perhaps, than in that of any 
other person in the world. She was his mother’s legacy to him. 
He was to be her patron and protector in some sort. How 
would she brave the news which he had to tell her ; and how 
should he explain the plans which he was meditating ? He felt 
as if neither he nor Blanche could bear Laura’s dazzling glance 


PENDENNIS. 


684 

of calm scrutiny, and as if he would not dare to disclose his 
worldly hopes and ambitions to that spotless judge. At her 
arrival at Baymouth, he wrote a letter thither which contained 
a great number of fine phrases and protests of affection, and a 
great deal of easy satire and raillery; in the midst of all- which 
Mr. Pen could not help feeling that he was in a panic, and that 
he was acting like a rogue and hypocrite. 

How was it that a simple country-girl should be the object 
of fear and trembling to such an accomplished gentleman as 
Mr. Pen ? His worldly tactics and diplomacy, his satire and 
knowledge of the world, could not bear the test of her purity, 
he felt somehow. And he had to own to himself that his affairs 
were in such a position, that he could not tell the truth to that 
honest soul. As he rode from Clavering to Baymouth he felt 
as guilty as a school-boy, who doesn’t know his lesson and is 
about to face the awful master. For is not truth the master 
always, and does she not have the power and hold the book ? 

Under the charge of her kind, though somewhat wayward 
and absolute patroness, Lady Rockminster, Laura had seen 
somewhat of the world in the last year, had gathered some ac- 
complishments, and profited by the lessons of society. Many a 
girl who had been accustomed to that too great tenderness in 
which Laura’s early life had been passed, would have been un- 
fitted for the changed existence which she now had to lead. 
Helen worshipped her two children, and thought, as home-bred 
women will, that all the world was made for them, or to be con- 
sidered after them. She tended Laura with a watchfulness of 
affection which never left her. If she had a headache, the widow 
was as alarmed as if there had never been an aching head be- 
fore in the world. She slept and woke, read, and moved under 
her mother’s fond superintendence, which was now withdrawn 
from her, along with the tender creature whose anxious heart 
would beat no more. And painful moments of grief and de- 
pression no doubt Laura had, when she stood in the great care- 
less world alone. Nobody heeded her griefs or her solitude. 
She was nor quite the equal, in social rank, of the lady whose 
companion she was, or of the friends and relatives of the im- 
perious, but kind old dowager. Some very likely bore her no 
good-will — some, perhaps, slighted her : it might have been that 
servants were occasionally rude ; their mistress certainly was 
often. Laura not seldom found herself in family meetings, the 
confidence and familiarity of which she felt were interrupted 
by her intrusion ; and her sensitiveness of course was wounded 
at the idea that she should give or feel this annoyance. How 


PENDENNIS. 


685 

many governesses are in the world, thought cheerful Laura, — • 
how many ladies, whose necessities make them slaves and com- 
panions by profession ! What bad tempers and coarse unkind- 
ness have not these to encounter! How infinitely better my 
lot is with these really kind and affectionate people than that 
of thousands of unprotected girls ! It was with this cordial 
spirit that our young lady adapted herself to her new position ; 
and went in advance of her fortune with a trustful smile. 

Did you ever know a person who met Fortune in that way, 
whom the goddess did not regard kindly ? Are not even bad 
people won by a constant cheerfulness and a pure and affec- 
tionate heart ? When the babes in the wood, in the ballad, 
looked up fondly and trustfully at those notorious rogues whom 
their uncle had set to make away with the little folks, we all know 
how one of the rascals relented, and made away with the other 
— not having the heart to be cruel to so much innocence and 
beauty. Oh, happy they who have that virgin loving trust and 
sweet smiling confidence in the world, and fear no evil because 
they think none ! Miss Laura Bell was one of these fortunate 
persons ; and besides the gentle widow’s little cross, which, as 
we have seen, Pen gave her, had such a sparkling and brilliant 
kohinoor in her bosom, as is even more precious than that 
famous jewel ; for it not only fetches a price, and is retained 
by its own in another world where diamonds are stated to be 
of no value, but here, too, is of inestimable worth to its pos- 
sessor ; is a talisman against evil, and lightens up the darkness 
of life, like Cogia Hassan’s famous stone. 

So that before Miss Bell had been a year in Lady Rock- 
minster’s house, there was not a single person in it whose love 
she had not won by the use of this talisman. From the old lady 
to the lowest dependent of her bounty, Laura had secured the 
good-will of everybody. With a mistress of such a temper, my 
Lady’s woman (who had endured her mistress for forty years, 
and had been clawed and scolded and jibed every day and 
night in that space of time) could not be expected to have a 
good temper of her own ; and was at first angry against Miss 
Laura, as she had been against her ladyship’s fifteen preceding 
companions. But when Laura was ill at Paris, this old woman 
nursed her in spite of her mistress, who was afraid of catching 
the fever, and absolutely fought for her medicine with Martha 
from Fairoaks, now advanced to be Miss Laura’s own maid. 
As she was recovering, Grandjean the chef wanted to kill her 
by the number of delicacies which he dressed for her, and wept 
when she ate her first slice of chicken. The Swiss major-domo 


686 


PENDENNIS. 


of the house celebrated Miss Bell’s praises in almost every 
European language, which he spoke with indifferent incorrect- 
ness ; the coachman was happy to drive her out ; the page cried 
when he heard she was ill ; and Calverley and Coldstream 
(those two footmen, so large, so calm ordinarily, and so difficult 
to move) broke out into extraordinary hilarity at the news of 
her convalescence, and intoxicated the page at a wine-shop, to 
jete Laura’s recovery. Even Lady Diana Pynsent (our former 
acquaintance Mr. Pynsent had married by this time), who had 
had a considerable dislike to Laura for some time, was so 
enthusiastic as to say that she thought Miss Bell was a very 
agreeable person, and that grandmamma had a great trouvaille 
in her. All this kindness Laura had acquired, not by any arts, 
not by any flattery ; but by the simple force of good-nature, 
and by the blessed gift of pleasing and being pleased. 

On the one or two occasions when he had seen Lady Rock- 
minster, the old lady, who did not admire him, had been very 
pitiless and abrupt with our young friend, and perhaps Pen 
expected when he came to Baymouth to find Laura installed 
in her house in the quality of humble companion, and treated 
no better than himself. When she heard of his arrival she 
came running down stairs, and I am not sure that she did not 
embrace him in the presence of Calverley and Coldstream : not 
that those gentlemen ever told ; if the fractus orbis had come 
to a smash, if Laura, instead of kissing Pen, had taken her 
scissors and snipped off his head — Calverley and Coldstream 
would have looked on impassively, without allowing a grain of 
powder to be. disturbed by the calamity. 

Laura had so much improved in health and looks that Pen 
could not but admire her. The frank eyes which met his 
beamed with good health ; the cheek which he kissed blushed 
with beauty. As he looked at her, artless and graceful, pure 
and candid, he thought he had never seen her so beautiful. 
Why should he remark her beauty now so much, and remark 
too to himself that he had not remarked it sooner ? He took 
her fair trustful hand and kissed it fondly : he looked in her 
bright clear eyes, and read in them that kindling welcome which 
he was always sure to find there. He was affected and touched 
by the tender tone and the pure sparkling glance ; their inno- 
cence smote him somehow and moved him. 

“ How good you are to me, Laura — sister ! ” said Pen, “ I 
don’t deserve that you should — that you should be so kind to 

- _ 99 

me. 

“ Mamma left you to me,” she said, stooping down and 


PENDENNIS. 


6S7 

brushing his forehead with her lips hastily. 11 You know you 
were to come to me when you were in trouble, or to tell me 
when you were very happy ; that was our compact, Arthur, last 
year, before we parted. Are you very happy now, or are you 
in trouble, which is it ? ” and she looked at him with an arch 
glance. “ Do you like going into Parliament ? Do you intend 
to distinguish yourself there ? How I shall tremble for youi 
first speech ! ” 

“ Do you know about the Parliament plan, then ? ” Pen 
asked. 4 

“ Know ? — all the world knows ! I have heard it talked 
about many times. Lady Rockminster’s doctor talked about it 
to-day. I dare say it will be in the Chatteris paper to-morrow. 
It is all over the county that Sir Francis Clavering, of Clavering, 
is going to retire, in behalf of Mr. Arthur Pendennis, of Fair- 
oaks ; and that the young and beautiful Miss Blanche Amory 
is ” 

“ What ! that too ? ” asked Pendennis. 

“ That, too, dear Arthur. Tout se sait , as somebody would 
say, whom I intend to be very fond of ; and who I am sure is 
very clever and pretty. I have had a letter from Blanche. The 
kindest of letters. She speaks so warmly of you, Arthur ! I 
hope — I know she feels what she writes. — When is it to be, Ar- 
thur? Why did you not tell me ? I may come and live with 
you then, mayn’t I ? ” 

“ My home is yours, dear Laura, and everything I have, ,, 
Pen said. “ If I did not tell you it was because — because — I 
do not know : nothing is decided yet. No words have passed 
between us. But you think Blanche could be happy with me — > 
don’t you ? Not a romantic fondness, you know. I have no 
heart, I think ; I’ve told her so > only a sober-sided attach- 
ment : — and want my wife on one side of the fire and my sister 
on the other, — Parliament in the session and Fairoaks in the 
holidays, and my Laura never to leave me until somebody who 
has a right comes to take her away.” 

Somebody w r ho has a right — somebody with a right ! Why 
did Pen, as he looked at the girl and slowly uttered the words, 
begin to feel angry and jealous with the invisible somebody 
with the right to take her away ? Anxious, but a minute ago, 
how she would take the news regarding his probable arrange- 
ments with Blanche, Pen was hurt somehow that she received 
the intelligence so easily, and took his happiness for granted. 

“ Until somebody comes,” Laura said, with a laugh, “ I will 
stay at home and be Aunt Laura, and take care of the children 


638 


SEND ENNIS. 


when Blanche is in the world. I have arranged it all. I am 
an excellent housekeeper. Do you know I have been to market 
at Paris with Mrs. Beck, and have taken some lessons from M. 
Grandjean ? And I have had some lessons in Paris in singing 
too, with the money which you sent me, you kind boy : and I can 
sing much better now : and I have learned to dance, though not 
so well as Blanche, and when you become a Minister of State, 
Blanche shall present me : ” and with this, and with a provok- 
ing good-humor, she performed for him the last Parisian curtsey. 

Lady Rockininster came in whilst this curtsey was being 
performed, and gave to Arthur one finger to shake ; which he 
took, and over which he bowed as well as he could, which, in 
truth, was very clumsily. 

“ So you are going to be married, sir,” said the old lady. 

“ Scold him, Lady Rockminster, for not telling us,” Laura 
said, going away : which, in truth, the old lady began instantly 
to do. “ So you are going to marry, and to go into Parliament 
in place of that good-for-nothing Sir Francis Clavering. I 
wanted him to give my grandson his seat — why did he not give 
my grandson his seat ? I hope you are to have a great deal of 
money with Miss Amory. /wouldn’t take her without a great 
deal.” 

“ Sir Francis Clavering is tired of Parliament,” Pen said, 
wincing, “ and I rather wish to attempt that career. The rest 
of the story is at least premature.” 

“ I wonder, when you had Laura at home, you could take 
up with such an affected little creature as that,” the old lady 
continued. 

“ I am very sorry Miss Amory does not please your lady- 
ship,” said Pen, smiling. 

“ You mean — that it is no affair of mine, and that I am not 
going to marry her. Well, I’m not, and I’m very glad I am not 
— a little odious thing — when I think that a man could prefer 
her to my Laura, I’ve no patience with him, and so I tell you, 
Mr. Arthur Pendennis.” 

“ I am very glad you see Laura with such favorable eyes,” 
Pen said. 

“ You are very glad, and you are very sorry. What does it 
matter, sir, whether you are very glad or very sorry? A young 
man who prefers Miss Amory to Miss Bell has no business to 
be sorry or glad. A young man who takes up with such a 
crooked lump of affectation as that little Amory, — for she is 
crooked, I tell you she is, — after seeing my Laura, has no right 
to hold up his head again. Where is your friend Bluebeard? 


PENDENNIS . 


689 

The tall young man I mean, — Warrington, isn’t his name ? Why 
does he not come down, and marry Laura ? What do the young 
men mean by not marrying such a girl as that ? They all marry 
for money now. You are all selfish and cowards. We ran 
away with each other, and made foolish matches in my time. I 
have no patience with the young men ! When I was at Paris 
in the winter, I asked all the three attaches at the Embassy why 
they did not fall in love with Miss Bell ? They laughed — they 
said they wanted money. You are all selfish — you are all 
cowards.” 

“I hope before you offered Miss Bell to the attaches,” said 
Pen, with some heat, “ you did her the favor to consult her ? ” 

“ Miss Bell has only a little money. Miss Bell must marry 
soon. Somebody must make a match for her, sir ; and a girl 
can’t offer herself,” said the old dowager, with great state. 
“ Laura, my dear, I’ve been telling your cousin that all the 
young men are selfish ; and that there is not a pennyworth of 
romance left among them. He is as bad as the rest.” 

“ Have you been asking Arthur why he won’t marry me ? ” 
said Laura, with a smile, coming back and taking her cousin’s 
hand. (She had been away, perhaps, to hide some traces of 
emotion, which she did not wish others to see.) “ He is going 
to marry somebody else ; and I intend to be very fond of her, 
and to go and live with them, provided he then does not ask 
every bachelor who comes to his house, why he does not marry 
me ? ” 


“ The terrors of Pen s conscience being thus appeased, and 
his examination before Laura over without any reproaches on 
the part of the latter, Pen began to find that his duty and in- 
clination led him constantly to Baymouth, where Lady Rock- 
minster informed him that a place was always reserved for him 
at her table. “ And I recommend you to come often,” the old 
lady said, “for Grandjean is an excellent cook, and to be with 
Laura and me will do your manners good. It is easy to see 
that you are always thinking about yourself. Don’t blush and 
stammer — almost all young men are always thinking about 
themselves. My sons and grandsons always were until I cured 
them. Come here, and let us teach you to behave properly ; 
you will not have to carve, that is done at the side-table. 
Hecker will give you as much wine as is good for you ; and on 
days when you are very good and amusing you shall have some 
champagne. Hecker, mind what I say. Mr. Pendennis is 
Miss Laura’s brother ; and you will make him comfortable, and 

44 


PENDENNIS . 


690 

see that he does not have too much wine, or disturb me whilst 
I am taking my nap after dinner. You are selfish: I intend to 
cure you of being selfish. You will dine here when you have 
no other engagements ; and if it rains, you had better put up at 
the hotel.” As long as the good lady could order everybody 
round about her, she was not hard to please ; and all the slaves 
and subjects of her little dowager court trembled before her, 
but loved her. 

She did not receive a very numerous or brilliant society. 
Tlie doctor, of course, was admitted, as a constant and faithful 
visitor ; the vicar and his curate ; and on public days the vicar’s 
wife and daughters, and some of the season visitors at Bay- 
mouth were received at the old lady’s entertainments ; but 
generally the company was a small one, and Mr. Arthur drank 
his wine by himself, when Lady Rockminster retired to take 
her doze, and to be played and sung to sleep by Laura after 
dinner. 

“ If my music can give her a nap,” said the good-natured 
girl, “ ought I not to be very glad that I can do so much good ? ” 
Lady Rockminster sleeps very little of night : and I used to 
read to her until I fell ill at Paris, since when she will not hear 
of my sitting up.” 

“ Why did you not write to me when you were ill ? ” asked 
Pen, with a blush. 

“ What good could you do me ? I had Martha to nurse 
me : and the doctor every day. You are too busy to write to 
women or to think about them. You have your books and your 
newspapers, and your politics and your railroads to occupy you. 
I wrote when I was well.” 

And Pen looked at her, and blushed again, as he remem- 
bered that, during all the time of her illness, he had never 
written to her, and had scarcely thought about her. 

In consequence of his relationship, Pen was free to walk 
and ride with his cousin constantly, and in the course of those 
walks and rides, could appreciate the sweet frankness of her 
disposition, and the truth, simplicity, and kindliness of her fair 
and spotless heart. In their mother’s lifetime, she had never 
spoken so openly or so cordially as now. The desire of poor 
Helen to make a union between her two children, had caused 
a reserve on Laura’s part towards Pen ; for which, under the 
altered circumstances of Arthur’s life, there was now no neces- 
sity. He was engaged to another woman ; and Laura became 
his sister at once, — hiding, or banishing from herself, any doubts 
which she might have as to his choice ; striving to look cheer- 


PENDENNIS. 


691 

fully forward, and hope for his prosperity ; promising herself to 
do all that affection might do to make her mother’s darling 
happy. 

Their talk was often about the departed mother. And it 
was from a thousand stories which Laura told him that Arthur 
was made aware how constant and absorbing that silent mater- 
nal devotion had been ; which had accompanied him present 
and absent through life, and had only ended with the fond 
widow’s last breath. One day the people in Clavering saw a 
lad in charge of a couple of horses at the churchyard-gate ; and 
it was iold over the place that Pen and Laura had visited 
Helen’s grave together. Since Arthur had come down into the 
country, he had been there once or twice : but the sight of the 
sacred stone had brought no consolation to him. A guilty man 
doing a guilty deed : a mere speculator, content to lay down his 
faith and honor for a fortune and a worldly career; and owning 
that his life was but a contemptible surrender — what right had 
he in the holy place ? — what booted it to him that others in the 
world he lived in were no better than himself? Arthur and 
Laura rode by the gates of Fairoaks ; and he shook hands with 
his tenant’s children, playing on the lawn and the terrace — 
Laura looked steadily at the cottage wall, at the creeper on the 
porch and the magnolia growing up to her window. “ Mr. 
Pendennis rode by to-day,” one of the boys told his mother, 
“ with a lady, and he stopped and talked to us, and he asked 
for a bit of honeysuckle off the porch, and gave it the lady. I 
couldn’t see if she was pretty ; she had her veil down. She 
was riding one of Cramp’s horses, out of Baymouth.” 

As they rode over the downs between home and Baymouth, 
Pen did not speak much, though they rode very close together. 
He was thinking what a mockery life was, and how men refuse 
happiness when they may have it ; or, having it, kick it down ; 
or barter it, with their eyes open, for a little worthless money 
or beggarly honor. And then the thought came, what does it 
matter for the little space ? The lives of the best and purest 
of us are consumed in a vain desire, and end in a disappoint- 
ment : as the dear soul’s who sleeps in her grave yonder. She 
had her life’s longing. The stone covers over our hopes 
and our memories. Our place knows us not. “ Other people’s 
children are playing on the grass,” he broke out, in a hard voice, 
“ where you and I used to play, Laura. And you see how the 
magnolia we planted has grown up since our time. I have 
been round to one or two of the cottages where my mother used 


PENDENNIS. 


692 

to visit. It is scarcely more than a year that she is gone, and 
the people whom she used to benefit care no more for her 
death than for Queen Anne’s. We are all selfish : the world is 
selfish : there are but a few exceptions, like you, my dear, to 
shine like good deeds in a naughty world, and make the black- 
ness more dismal.” 

“I wish you would not speak in that way, Arthur,” said 
Laura, looking down and bending her head to the honeysuckle 
on her breast. “ When you told the little boy 10 give me this, 
you were not selfish.” 

“ A pretty sacrifice I made to get it for you ! ” said the 
sneerer. 

“ But your heart was kind and full of love when you did so. 
One cannot ask for more than love and kindness ; and if you 
think humbly of yourself, Arthur, the love and kindness are not 
diminished — are they ? I often thought our dearest mother 
spoilt you at home, by worshipping you ; and that if you are — 
I hate the word — what you say, her too great fondness helped 
to make you so. And as for the world, when men go out into 
it, I suppose they cannot be otherwise than selfish. You have 
to fight for yourself, and to get on for yourself, and to make a 
name for yourself. Mamma and your uncle both encouraged 
you in this ambition. If it is a vain thing, why pursue it ? I 
suppose such a clever man as you intend to do a great deal of 
good to the country, by going into Parliament, or you would 
not wish to be there. What are you going to do when you are 
in the House of Commons ? ” 

“Women don’t understand about politics, my dear,” Pen 
said, sneering at himself as he spoke. 

“ But why don’t you make us understand ? I could never 
tell about Mr. Pynsent why he should like to be there so much. 
He is not a clever man — ” 

“ He certainly is not a genius, Pynsent,” said Pen. 

“ Lady Diana says that he attends Committees all day ; that 
then again he is at the House all night ; that he always votes 
as he is told ; that he never speaks ; that he will never get on 
beyond a subordinate place, and, as his grandmother tells him, 
he is choked with red-tape. Are you going to follow the same 
career, Arthur ? What is there in it so brilliant that you should 
be so eager for it ? I would rather that you should stop at home, 
and write books — good books, kind books, with gentle kind 
thoughts, such as you have, dear Arthur, and such as might do 
people good to read. And if you do not win fame, what then ? 
You own it is vanity, and you can live very happily without it. 


PENDENNIS. 


693 

I must not pretend to advise : but I take you at your own word 
about the world ; and as you own it is wicked, and that it tires 
you, ask you why you don’t leave it ? ” 

“And what would you have ine do ? ” asked Arthur. 

“I would have you bring your wife to Fairoaks to live there, 
and study, and do good round about you. I would like to see 
your own children playing on the lawn, Arthur, and that we 
might pray in our mother’s church again once more, dear 
brother. If the world is a temptation, are we not told to pray 
that we may not be led into it ? ” 

“ Do you think Blanche would make a good wife for a petty 
country gentleman ? Do you think I should become the char- 
acter very well, Laura?” Pen asked. “Remember temptation 
walks about the hedgerows as well as the city streets : and 
idleness is the greatest tempter of all.” 

“ What does — does Mr. Warrington say ? ” said Laura, as 
a blush mounted up to her cheek, and of which Pen saw the 
fervor, though Laura’s veil fell over her face to hide it. 

Pen rode on by Laura’s side silently for a while. George’s 
name so mentioned brought back the past to him, and the 
thoughts which he had once had regarding George and Laura. 
Why should the recurrence of the thought agitate him, now 
that he knew the union was impossible ? Why should he be 
curious to know if, during the months of their intimacy, Laura 
had felt a regard for Warrington ? From that day until the 
present time George had never alluded to his story, and Arthur 
remembered now that since then George had scarcely ever men- 
tioned Laura’s name. 

At last he came close to her. “ Tell me something, Laura,” 
he said. 

She put back her veil and looked at him. “ What is it, 
Arthur ? ” she asked — though from the tremor of her voice she 
guessed very well. 

“ Tell me — but for George’s misfortune — I never knew him 
speak of it before or since that day — would you — would you 
have given him — what you refused me ? ” 

“ Yes, Pen,” she said, bursting into tears. 

“ He deserved you better than I did,” poor Arthur groaned 
forth, with an indescribable pang at his heart. “ I am but a 
selfish wretch, and George is better, nobler, truer, than I am. 
God bless him ! ” 

“ Yes, Pen,” said Laura, reaching out her hand to her 
cousin, and he put his arm round her, and for a moment she 
sobbed on his shoulder. 


PEND ENNIS. 


694 

The gentle girl had had her secret, and told it. In the 
widow’s last journey from Fairoaks, when hastening with her 
mother to Arthur’s sick-bed, Laura had made a different con- 
fession ; and it was only when Warrington told his own story, 
and described the hopeless condition of his life, that she dis- 
covered how much her feelings had changed, and with what 
tender sympathy, with what great respect, delight, and admira- 
tion she had grown to regard her cousin’s friend. Until she 
knew that some plans she might have dreamed of were impos- 
sible, and that Warrington, reading her heart, perhaps, had 
told his melancholy story to warn her, she had not asked her- 
self whether it was possible that her affections could change ; 
and had been shocked and scared by the discovery of the truth. 
How should she have told it to Helen, and confessed her 
shame ? Poor Laura felt guilty before her friend, with the 
secret which she dared not confide to her ; felt as if she 
had been ungrateful for Helen’s love and regard ; felt as if 
she had been wickedly faithless to Pen in withdrawing that 
love from him which he did not even care to accept ; humble 
even and repentant before Warrington, lest she should have en- 
couraged him by undue sympathy, or shown the preference 
which she began to feel. 

The catastrophe which broke up Laura’s home, and the 
grief and anguish which she felt for her mother’s death, gave 
her little leisure for thoughts more selfish ; and by the time 
she rallied from that grief the minor one was also almost cured. 
It was but for a moment that she had indulged a hope about 
Warrington. Her admiration and respect for him remained as 
strong as ever. But the tender feeling with which she knew she 
had regarded him was schooled into such calmness, that it may 
be said to have been dead and passed away. The pang which 
it left behind was one of humility and remorse. “ Oh, how 
wicked and proud I was about Arthur,” she thought ; “ how 
self-confident and unforgiving ! I never forgave from my heart 
this poor girl, who was fond of him, or him for encouraging her 
love ; and I have been more guilty than she, poor, little, artless 
creature ! I, professing to love one man, could listen to 
another only too eagerly ; and would not pardon the change of 
feelings in Arthur, whilst I myself was changing and unfaithful.” 
And so humiliating herself and acknowledging her weakness, 
the poor girl sought for strength and refuge in the manner in 
which she had been accustomed to look for them. 

She had done no wrong : but there are some folks who 
suffer for a fault ever so trifling as much as others whose stout 


PENDENNIS. 


6 9S 

consciences can walk under crimes of almost any weight ; and 
poor Laura chose to fancy that she had acted in this delicate 
juncture of her life as a very great criminal. She determined 
that she had done Pen a great injury by withdrawing that love 
which, privately in her mother’s hearing, she had bestowed 
upon him ; that she had been ungrateful to her dead benefac- 
tress by ever allowing herself to think of another or of violating 
her promise ; and that, considering her own enormous crimes, 
she ought to be very gentle in judging those of others, whose 
temptations were much greater, very likely : and whose motives 
she could not understand. 

A year back, Laura would have been indignant at the idea 
that Arthur should marry Blanche : and her high spirit would 
have risen as she thought that from worldly motives he should 
stoop to one so unworthy. Now when the news was brought 
to her of such a chance (the intelligence was given to her by 
old Lady Rockminster, whose speeches were as direct and 
rapid as a slap on the face), the humbled girl winced a little at 
the blow, but bore it meekly, and with a desperate acquies- 
cence. “ He has a right to marry ; he knows a great deal 
more of the world than I do,” she argued with herself. 
“ Blanche may not be so light-minded as she seemed, and who 
am I to be her judge ? I dare say it is very good that Arthur 
should go into Parliament and distinguish himself, and my duty 
is to do everything that lies in my power to aid him and 
Blanche, and to make his home happy. I dare say I shall live 
with them. If I am godmother to one of their children, I will 
leave her my three thousand pounds ! ” And forthwith she began 
to think what she could give Blanche out of her small treasures, 
and how best to conciliate her affection. She wrote her forth- 
with a kind letter, in which, of course, no mention was made of the 
plans in contemplation, but in which Laura recalled old times, 
and spoke her good-will, and in reply to this she received an 
eager answer from Blanche : in which not a word about marriage 
was said, to be sure, but Mr. Pendennis was mentioned two or 
three times in the letter, and they were to be henceforth dearest 
Laura, and dearest Blanche, and loving sisters, and so forth. 

When Pen and Laura reached home, after Laura’s confes- 
sion, (Pen’s noble acknowledgment of his own inferiority and 
generous expression of love for Warrington, causing the girl’s 
heart to throb, and rendering doubly keen those tears which 
she sobbed on his shoulder,) a little* slim letter was awaiting 
Miss Bell in the hall, which she trembled rather guiltily as she 
unsealed, and which Pen blushed as he recognized : for he saw 
instantly that it was from Blanche. 


6 9 6 


PENDENNIS. 


Laura opened it hastily, and cast her eyes quickly over it, 
as Pen kept his fixed on her, blushing. 

“ She dates from London,” Laura said. “ She has been 
with old Bonner, Lady Clavering’s maid. Bonner is going to 
marry Lightfoot the butler. Where do you think Blanche has 
been ? ” she cried out eagerly. 

“ To Paris, to Scotland, to the Casino ? ” 

“ To Shepherd’s Inn, to see Fanny ; but Fanny wasn’t there, 
and Blanche is going to leave a present for her. Isn’t it kind 
of her and thoughtful ? ” And she handed the letter to Pen, 
who read — 

“ ‘ I saw Madame Mbre, who was scrubbing the room, and 
looked at me with very scrubby looks ; but la belle Fanny was 
not au logis ; and as I heard that she was in Captain Strong’s 
apartments, Bonner and I mounted au troisieme to see this 
famous beauty. Another disappointment — only the Chevalier 
Strong and a friend of his in the room : so we came away after 
all without seeing the enchanting Fanny. 

“ ‘ Je t'envoie milk et mille baisers. When will that horrid 
canvassing be over ? Sleeves are worn, &c., &c., &c. ” 

After dinner the doctor was reading the Times. “ A young 
gentleman I attended when he was here some eight or nine 
years ago, has come into a fine fortune,” the doctor said. “ I 
see here announced the death of John Henry Foker, Esq., of 
Logwood Hall, at Pau, in the Pyrenees, on the 15th ult.” 


CHAPTER LXVII. 

IN WHICH THE MAJOR IS BIDDEN TO STAND AND DELIVER. 

Any gentleman who has frequented the “ Wheel of Fortune ” 
public-house, where it may be remembered that Mr. James 
Morgan’s Club was held, and where Sir Francis Clavering had 
an interview with Major Pendennis, is aware that there are 
three rooms for guests upon the ground floor, besides the bar 
where the landlady sits. One is a parlor frequented by the 
public at large ; to another room gentlemen in livery resort ; 
and the third apartment, on the door of which “ Private ” is 
painted, is that hired by the Club of “The Confidentials,” of 
which Messrs. Morgan and Lightfoot were members. 


PENDENNIS. 


697 

The noiseless Morgan had listened to the conversation 
between Strong and Major Pendennis at the latter’s own lodg- 
ings, and had carried away from it matter for much private 
speculation ; and a desire of knowledge had led him to follow 
his master when the Major came to the “ Wheel of Fortune,” 
and to take his place quietly in the Confidential room, whilst 
Pendennis and Clavering had their discourse in the parlor. 
There was a particular corner in the Confidential room from 
which you could hear almost all that passed in the next apart- 
ment ; and as the conversation between the two gentlemen 
there was rather angry, and carried on in a high key, Morgan 
had the benefit of overhearing almost the whole of it ; and 
what he heard strengthened the conclusions which his mind 
had previously formed. 

“ He knew Altamont at once, did he, when he saw him in 
Sydney ? Clavering ain’t no more married to my Lady than I 
am ! Altamont’s the man : Altamont’s a convict ; young Harthui 
comes into Parlyment, and the Gov’nor promises not to split. By 
Jove, what a sly old rogue it is, that old Gov’nor ! No wonder 
he’s anxious to make the match between Blanche and Harthur : 
why, she’ll have a hundred thousand if she’s a penny, and bring 
her man a seat in Parlyment into the bargain.” Nobody saw, 
but a physiognomist would have liked to behold, the expression 
of Mr. Morgan’s countenance, when this astounding intelligence 
was made clear to him. “ But for my hage, and the confounded 
prejudices of society,” he said, surveying himself in the glass, 
“ dammy, James Morgan, you might marry her yourself.” But 
if he could not marry Miss Blanche and her fortune, Morgan 
thought he could mend his own by the possession of this infor- 
mation, and that it might be productive of benefit to him from 
very many sources. Of all the persons whom the secret 
affected, the greater number would not like to have it known. 
For instance, Sir Francis Clavering, whose fortune it involved, 
would wish to keep it quiet ; Colonel Altamont, whose neck it 
implicated, would naturally be desirous to hush it : and that 
young upstart beast, Mr. Harthur, who was for gettin’ into 
Parlyment on the strenth of it, and was as proud as if he was 
a duke with half a millium a year (such, we grieve to say, was 
Morgan’s opinion of his employer’s nephew), would pay any- 
think sooner than let the world know that he was married to a 
convick’s daughter, and had got his seat in Parlyment by 
trafficking with this secret. 4s for Lady C., Morgan thought, 
if she’s tired of Clavering, and wants to get rid of him, she’ll 
pay: if she’s frightened about her son, and fond of the little 


PENDENNIS. 


698 

beggar, she’ll pay all the same : and Miss Blanche will certainly 
come down handsome to the man who will put her into her 
rights, which she was unjustly defrauded of them, and no mis- 
take. “ Dammy,” concluded the valet, reflecting upon this 
wonderful hand which luck had given him to play, “ with such 
cards as these, James Morgan, you are a made man. It may 
be a reg’lar enewity to me. Every one of ’em must susscribe. 
And with what I’ve made already, I may cut business, give my 
old Gov’nor warning, turn gentleman, and have a servant of 
my own, begad.” Entertaining himself with calculations such 
as these, that were not a little likely to perturb a man’s spirit, 
Mr. Morgan showed a very great degree of self-command by 
appearing and being calm, and by not allowing his future pros- 
pects in any way to interfere with his present duties. 

One of the persons whom the story chiefly concerned, 
Colonel Altamont, was absent from London, when Morgan was 
thus made acquainted with his history. The valet knew of Sir 
Francis Clavering’s Shepherd’s Inn haunt, and walked thither 
an hour or two after the Baronet and Pendennis had had their 
conversation together. But that bird was flown ; Colonel 
Altamont had received his Derby winnings, and was gone to 
the Continent. The fact of his absence was exceedingly vexa- 
tious to Mr. Morgan. “ He’ll drop all that money at the 
gambling-shops on the Rhine,” thought Morgan, “ and I might 
have had a good bit of it. It’s confounded annoying to think 
he’s gone and couldn’t have waited a few days longer.” 
Hope, triumphant or deferred, ambition or disappointment, 
victory or patient ambush, Morgan bore all alike, with similar 
equable countenance. Until the proper day came, the Major’s 
boots were varnished and his hair was curled, his early cup of 
tea was brought to his bedside, his oaths, rebukes, and senile 
satire borne, with silent obsequious fidelity. Who would think, 
to see him waiting upon his master, packing and shouldering 
his trunks, and occasionally assisting at table, at the country- 
houses where he might be staying, that Morgan was richer than 
his employer, and knew his secrets and other people’s ? In 
the profession Mr. Morgan was greatly respected and admired, 
and his reputation for wealth and wisdom got him much 
renown at most supper-tables : the younger gentlemen voted 
him stoopid, a feller of no ideas, and a fogey, in a word : 
but not one of them would not say amen to the heartfelt prayer 
which some of the most serious-minded among the gentlemen 
uttered, “ When I die may I cut up as well as Morgan Pen- 
dennis ! ” 


PENDENNIS. 


699 

As became a man of fashion, Major Pendennis spent the 
autumn passing from house to house of such country friends as 
were at home to receive him, and if the duke happened to be 
abroad, or the Marquis in Scotland, condescending to sojourn 
with Sir John or the plain Squire. To say the truth, the old 
gentleman’s reputation was somewhat on the wane ; many of 
the men of his time had died out, and the occupants of their 
halls and the present wearers of their titles knew not Major 
Pendennis ; and little cared for his traditions of the wild Prince 
and Poins, and of the heroes of fashion passed away. It must 
have struck the good man with melancholy as he walked by 
many a London door, to think how seldom it was now opened 
for him, and how often he used to knock at it — to what ban- 
quets and welcome he used to pass through it — a score of years 
back. He began to own that he was no longer of the present 
age, and dimly to apprehend that the young men laughed at 
him. Such melancholy musings must come across many a 
Pall Mall philosopher. The men, thinks he, are not such as 
they used to be in his time : the old grand manner and courtly 
grace of life are gone : what is Castlewood House and the 
present Castlewood, compared to the magnificence of the old 
mansion and owner ? The late lord came to London with four 
post-chaises and sixteen horses : all the West Road hurried 
out to look at his cavalcade : the people in London streets 
even stopped as his procession passed them. The present lo'd 
travels with five bagmen in a railway carriage, and sneaks away 
from the station, smoking a cigar in a brcrtigham. The late 
lord in autumn filled Castlewood with company, who drank claret 
till midnight : the present man buries himself in a hut on a 
Scotch mountain, and passes November in two or three closets 
in an entresol at Paris, where his amusements are a dinner at 
a cafe and a box at a little theatre. What a contrast there is 
between his Lady Lorraine, the Regent’s Lady Lorraine, and 
her little ladyship of the present era ! He figures to himself 
the first, beautiful, gorgeous, magnificent in diamonds and 
velvets, daring in rouge, the wits of the world (the old wits, the 
old polished gentlemen — not the ca7iaille of to-day with their 
language of the cab-stand, and their coats smelling of smoke) 
bowing at her feet ; and then think of to-day’s Lady Lorraine 
— a little woman in a black silk gown, like a governess, who 
talks astronomy, and laboring classes, and emigration, and the 
deuce knows what, and lurks to church at eight o’clock in the 
morning. Abbots-Lorraine, that used to be the noblest house 
in the county, is turned into a monastery — a regular La Trappe. 


joo 


PENDENNIS . 


They don’t drink two glasses of wine after dinner, and every 
other man at table is a country curate, with a white neck-cloth, 
whose talk is about Polly Higson’s progress at school, or widow 
Watkins’ lumbago. “ And the other young men, those loung- 
ing guardsmen and great lazy dandies — sprawling over sofas 
and billiard-tables, and stealing off to smoke pipes in each 
other’s bedrooms, caring for nothing, reverencing nothing, not 
even an old gentleman wh<5 has known their fathers and their 
betters, not even a pretty woman — what a difference there is 
between those men who poison the very turnips and stubble- 
fields with their tobacco, and the gentlemen of our time ! ” 
thinks the Major : “ the breed is gone — there’s no use for ’em ; 
they’re replaced by a parcel of damned cotton-spinners and 
utilitarians, and young sprigs of parsons with their hair combed 
down their backs. I'm getting old : they’re getting past me : 
they laugh at us old boys,” thought old Pendennis. And he 
was not far wrong ; the times and manners which he admired 
were pretty nearly gone — the gay young men “ larked ” him 
irreverently, whilst the. serious youth had a grave pity and won- 
der at him, which would have been even more painful to bear, 
had the old gentleman been aware of its extent. But he was 
rather simple : his examination of moral questions had never 
been very deep ; it had never struck him perhaps, until very 
lately, that he was otherwise than a most respectable and rather 
fortunate man. Is there no old age but his without reverence ? 
Did youthful folly never jeer at other bald pates ? For the 
past two or three years, he had begun to perceive that his day 
v/as wellnigh over, and that the men of the new time had 
begun to reign. 

After a rather unsuccessful autumn season, then, during 
which he was faithfully followed by Mr. Morgan, his nephew 
Arthur being engaged, as we have seen, at Clavering, it hap- 
pened that Major Pendennis came back for awhile to London, 
at the dismal end of October, when the fogs and the lawyers 
come to town. Who has not looked with interest at those 
loaded cabs, piled boxes, and crowded children, rattling through 
the streets on the dun October evenings ; stopping at the dark 
houses, where they discharge nurse and infant, girls, matron 
and father, whose holidays are over ? Yesterday it was France 
and sunshine, or Broadstairs and liberty; to-day comes work 
and a yellow fog ; and, ye gods ! what a heap of bills there lies 
in Master’s study. And the clerk has brought the lawyer’s 
papers from Chambers ; and in half an hour the literary man 
knows that the printer’s boy will be in the passage : and Mr. 


PENDENNIS. 


701 


Smith with that little account (that particular little account) has 
called presentient of your arrival, and has left word that he will 
call to-morrow morning at ten. Who amongst us has not said 
good-by to his holiday ; returned to dun London, and his fate; 
surveyed his labors and liabilities laid out before him, and been 
aware of that inevitable little account to settle ? Smith and his 
little account in the morning, symbolize duty, difficulty, struggle, 
which you will meet, let us hope, friend, with a manly and honest 
heart. — And you think of him, as the children are slumbering 
once more in their own beds, and the watchful housewife 
tenderly pretends to sleep. 

Old Pendennis had no special labors or bills to encounter on 
the morrow, as he had no affection at home to soothe him. He 
had always money in his desk sufficient for his wants ; and being 
by nature and habit tolerably indifferent to the wants of other 
people, these latter were not likely to disturb him. But a 
gentleman may be out of temper though he does not owe a shil- 
ling : and though he may be ever so selfish, he must occasion- 
ally feel dispirited and lonely. He had had two or three twinges 
of gout in the country-house where he had been staying : the 
birds were wild and shy, and the walking over the ploughed 
fields had fatigued him deucedly : the young men had laughed 
at him, and he had been peevish at table once or twice : he had 
not been able to get his whist of an evening : and, in fine, was 
glad to come away. In all his dealings with Morgan, his valet, 
he had been exceedingly sulky and discontented. He had 
sworn at him and abused him for many days past. He had 
scalded his mouth with bad soup at Swindon. He had left his 
umbrella in the railroad carriage : at which piece of forgetful- 
ness, he was in such a rage, that he cursed Morgan more freely 
than ever. Both the chimneys smoked furiously in his lodgings ; 
and when he caused the windows to be flung open, he swore so 
acrimoniously, that Morgan was inclined to fling him out of 
window, too, through that opened casement. The valet swore 
after his master, as Pendennis went down the street on his way 
to the Club. 

Bays’s was not at all pleasant. The house had been new 
painted, and smelt of varnish and turpentine, and a large streak 
of white paint inflicted itself on the back of the old boy’s fur- 
collared surtout. The dinner was not good : and the three most 
odious men in all London — old Hawkshaw, whose cough and 
accompaniments are fit to make any man uncomfortable ; old 
Colonel Gripley, who seizes on all the newspapers ; and that 
irreclaimable old bore J awkins- who would come and dine at 


PEND ENNIS. 


702 

the next table to Pendennis, and describe to him every inn-bill 
which he had paid in his foreign tour : each and all of these 
disagreeable personages and incidents had contributed to make 
Major Pendennis miserable ; and the Club waiter trod on his 
toe as he brought him his coffee. Never alone appear the Im- 
mortals. The Furies always hunt in company : they pursued 
Pendennis from home to the Club, and from the Club home. 

Whilst the Major was absent from his lodgings, Morgan had 
been seated in the landlady’s parlor, drinking freely of hot 
brandy-and-water, and pouring out on Mrs. Brixham some of 
the abuse which he had received from his master up stairs. Mrs. 
Brixham was Morgan’s slave. He was his landlady’s landlord. 
He had bought the lease of the house which she rented ; he had 
got her name and her son’s to acceptances, and a bill of sale 
which made him master of the luckless widow’s furniture. The 
young Brixham was a clerk in an insurance office, and Morgan 
could put him into what he called quod any day. Mrs. Brix- 
ham was a clergyman’s widow, and Mr. Morgan, after perform- 
ing his duties on the first floor, had a pleasure in making the old 
lady fetch him his boot-jack and his slippers. She was his 
slave. The little black profiles of her son and daughter ; the 
very picture of Tiddlecot Church, where she was married, and 
her poor dear Brixham lived and died, was now Morgan’s prop- 
erty, as it hung there over the mantel-piece of his back-parlor. 
Morgan sat in the widow’s backroom, in the ex-curate’s old 
horse-hair study-chair, making Mrs. Brixham bring supper for 
him, and fill his glass again and again. 

The liquor was bought with the poor woman’s own coin, and 
hence Morgan indulged in it only the more freely ; and he had 
eaten his supper and was drinking a third tumbler when old 
Pendennis returned from the Club, and went up stairs to his 
rooms. Mr. Morgan swore very savagely at him and his bell, 
when he had heard the latter, and finished his tumbler of brandy 
before he went up to answer the summons. 

He received the abuse consequent on this delay in silence, 
nor did the Major condescend to read in the flushed face and 
glaring eyes of the man, the anger under which he was laboring. 
The old gentleman’s foot-bath was at the fire ; his gown and 
slippers awaiting him there. Morghn knelt down to take his 
boots off with due subordination : and as the Major abused him 
from above, kept up a growl of maledictions below at his feet. 
Thus, when Pendennis was crying “ Confound you, sir, mind 
that strap — curse you, don’t wrench my foot off,” Morgan sotto 
voce below was expressing a wish to strangle him, drown him, 
and punch his head off. 


1 



MR. MORGAN AT HIS EASE, 





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PENDENNIS. 


7°3 


The boots removed, it became necessary to divest Mr. Pen- 
dennis of his coat : and for this purpose the valet had neces- 
sarily to approach very near to his employer; so near that Pen- 
dennis could not but perceive what Mr. Morgan’s late 'occupation 
had been ; to. which he adverted in that simple and forcible 
phraseology which men are sometimes in the habit of using to 
their domestics ; informing Morgan that he was a drunken 
beast, and that he smelt of brandy. 

At this the man broke out, losing patience, and flinging up 
all subordination. “ I’m drunk, am I ? I’m a beast, am I ? 

I’m d d, am I ? you infernal old miscreant. Shall I wring 

your old head off, and drownd yer in that pail of water ? Do 
you think I’m a-goin’ to bear your confounded old harrogance, 
you old Wigsby ! Chatter your old hivories at me, do you, you 
grinning old baboon ! Come on, if you are a man, and can 
stand to a man. Ha ! you coward, knives, knives ! ” 

“ If you advance a step I’ll send it into you,” said the Major, 
seizing up a knife that was on the table near him. “ Go down 
stairs, you drunken brute, and leave the house ; send for your 
book and your wages in the morning, and never let me see your 

insolent face again. This d d impertinence of yours has 

been growing for some months past. You have been growing 
too rich. You are not fit for service. Get out of it, and out 
of the house.” 

“ And where would you wish me to go, pray, out of the 
’ouse ? ” asked the man, “ and won’t it be equal convenient to- 
morrow mornin’ ? — tootyfay mame shose, sivvaplay , munseer ? ” 

“ Silence, you beast, and go ! ” cried out the Major. 

Morgan began to laugh, with rather a sinister laugh. “ Look 
yere, Pendennis,” he said, seating himself ; “ since I’ve been in 

this room you’ve called me beast, brute, dog : and d d me, 

haven’t you ? How do you suppose one man likes that sort of 
talk from another ? How many years have I waited on you, 
and how many damns and* cusses have you given me, along with 
my wages ? Do you think a man’s a dog, that you can talk to 
him in this way ? If I choose to drink a little, why shouldn’t 
I ? I’ve seen many a gentleman drunk form’ly, and per’aps 
have the ’abit from them. I ain’t a-goin’ to leave this house, 
old feller, and shall I tell you why ? The house is my house, 
every stick of furnitur’ in it is mine, excep’ your old traps, and 
your shower-bath, and your wig-box. I’ve bought the place, I 
tell you, with my own industry and perseverance. I can show 
a hundred pound, where you can show a fifty, or your damned 
supersellious nephew either. I’ve served you honorable, done 


PENDENNIS ; 


7°4 

everything for you these dozen years, and I’m a dog, am I ? 
I’m a beast, am I ? That’s the language for gentlemen, not for 
our rank. But I’ll bear it no more. I throw up your service ; 
I’m tired on it ; I’ve combed your old wig and buckled your old 
girths and waistbands long enough, I tell you. Don’t look 
savage at me, I’m sitting in my own chair, in my own room, a- 
telling the truth to you. I’ll be your beast, and your brute, and 
your dog no more, Major Pendennis ’Alf Pay.” 

The fury of the old gentleman, met by the servant’s abrupt 
revolt, had been shocked and cooled by the concussion, as much 
as if a sudden shower-bath or a pail of cold water had been 
flung upon him. That effect produced, and his anger calmed, 
Morgan’s speech had interested him, and he rather respected 
his adversary, and his courage in facing him, as of old days, in 
the fencing-room, he would have admired the opponent who 
hit him. 

“ You are no longer my servant,” the Major said : “ and the 
house may be yours ; but the lodgings are mine, and you will 
have the goodness to leave them. To-morrow morning, when we 
have settled our accounts, I shall remove into other quarters. 
In the meantime, I desire to go to bed, and have not the slight- 
est wish for your farther company.” 

“ We'U have a settlement, don’t you be afraid, Morgan said, 
getting up from his chair. “ I ain’t done with you yet ; nor 
with your family, nor with the Clavering family, Major Penden- 
nis ; and that you shall know.” 

“ Have the goodness to leave the room, sir; — I’m tired,” 
said the Major. 

“ Hah ! you’ll be more tired of me afore you’ve done,” 
answered the man, with a sneer, and walked out of the room ; 
leaving the Major to compose himself, as best he might, after 
the agitation of this extraordinary scene. 

He sat and mused by his fireside over the past events, and 
the confounded impudence and ingratitude of servants ; and 
thought how he should get a new man : how devilish unpleasant 
it was for a man of his age, and with his habits, to part with a 
fellow to whom he had been accustomed : how Morgan had a 
receipt for boot-varnish, which was incomparably better and 
more comfortable to the feet than any he had ever tiied : how 
very well he made mutton-broth, and tended him when he was 
unwell. “Gad, it’s a hard thing to lose a fellow of that sort : 
but he must go,” thought the Major. “ He has grown rich, 
and impudent since he has grown rich. He was horribly tipsy 
and abusive to-night. We must part, and I must go out of the 


PEND ENNIS. 


7 ° 5 

lodgings. Dammy, I like the lodgings ; I’m used to ’em. It’s 
very unpleasant, at my time of life, to change my quarters.” 
And so on, mused the old gentleman. The shower-bath had 
done him good : the testiness was gone : the loss of the um- 
brella, the smell of paint at the Club, were forgotten under the 
superior excitement. “ Confound the insolent villain ! ” thought 
the old gentleman. “ He understood my wants to a nicety ; 
he was the best servant in England.” He thought about his 
servant as a man thinks of a horse that has carried him long 
and well, and that has come down with him, and is safe no 
longer. How the deuce to replace him ? Where can he get 
such another animal ? 

In these melancholy cogitations the Major, who had donned 
his own dressing-gown and replaced his head of hair (a little 
gray had been introduced into the coiffure of late by Mr. True- 
fitt, which had given the Major’s head the most artless and 
respectable appearance) ; in these cogitations, we say, the Ma- 
jor. who had taken off his wig and put on his night-handker- 
chief, sat absorbed by the fireside, when a feeble knock came 
at his door which was presently opened by the landlady of the 
lodgings. 

“ God bless my soul, Mrs. Brixham ! ” cried out the Major, 
startled that a lady should behold him in the simple appareil of 
his night-toilette. “ It — it’s very late, Mrs. Brixham.” 

“ I wish I might speak to you, sir,” said the landlady, very 
piteously. 

“ About Morgan, I suppose ? He has cooled himself at 
the pump. Can’t take him back, Mrs. Brixham. Impossible. 
I’d determined to part with him before, when I heard of his 
dealings in the discount business — I suppose you’ve heard of 
them, Mrs. Brixham ? My servant’s a capitalist, begad.” 

“ Oh, sir,” said Mrs. Brixham, “ I know it to my cost. I 
borrowed from him a little money five years ago ; and though 
I have paid him many times over, I am entirely in his power. 
I am ruined by him, sir. Everything I had is his. He’s a 
dreadful man.” 

“ Eh, Mrs. Brixham ? taut pis — dev’lish sorry for you, and 
that I must quit your house after lodging here so long : there’s 
no help for it. I must go.” 

“ He says we must all go, sir,” sobbed out the luckless 
widow. “ He came down stairs from you just now — he had 
been drinking and it always makes him very wicked — and he 
said that you had insulted him, sir, and treated him like a dog, 
and spoken to him unkindly ; and he swore he would be re- 

45 


PENDENNIS. 


706 

venged, and — and I owe him a hundred and twenty pounds, 
sir, — and he has a bill of sale of all my furniture — and says he 
will turn me out of my house, and send my poor George to 
prison. He has been the ruin of my family, that man.” 

“ Dev’lish sorry, Mrs. Brixham ; pray take a chair. What 
can I do ? ” 

“ Could you not intercede with him for us ? George will 
give half his allowance : my daughter can send something. If 
you will but stay on, sir, and pay a quarter’s rent in ad- 
vance ” 

“ My good madam, I would as soon give you a quarter in 
advance as not, if I were going to stay in the lodgings. But I 
can’t ; and I can’t afford to fling away twenty pounds, my good 
madam. I’m a poor half-pay officer, and want every shilling I 
have, begad. As far as a few pounds goes — say five pounds — 
I don’t say — and shall be most happy, and that sort of thing ; 
and I’ll give it to you in the morning with pleasure : but — but 
it’s gettinglate, and I have made a railroad journey.” 

“ God’s will be done, sir,” said the poor woman, drying her 
tears. “ I must bear my fate.” 

“ And a dev’lish hard one it is, and most sincerely I pity 
you, Mrs. Brixham. I — I’ll say ten pounds, if you will permit 
me. Good-night.” 

“ Mr. Morgan, sir, when he came down stairs, and when — 
when I besought him to have pity on me, and told him he had 
been the ruin of the family, said something which I did not well 
understand — that he would ruin every family in the house — 
that he knew something would bring you down too — and that 
you should pay him for your — your insolence to him. I — I 
must own to you, that I went down on my knees to him, sir; 
and he said, with a dreadful oath against you, that he would 
have you on your knees.” 

“ Me ? — by Gad, that is too pleasant ! Where is the con- 
founded fellow ? ” 

“ He went away, sir. He said he should see you in the 
morning. Oh, pray try and pacify him, and save me and my 
poor boy.” And the widow went away with this prayer, to 
pass her night as she might, and look for the dreadful morrow. 

The last words about himself excited Major Pendennis so 
much, that his compassion for Mrs. Brixham ’s misfortunes was 
quite forgotten in the consideration of his own case. 

“ Me on my knees ? ” thought he, as he got into bed : “ con- 
found his impudence. Who ever saw me on my knees ? What 
the devil does the fellow know ? Gad, I’ve not had an affair 


PENDENNIS. 


7°7 

these twenty years. I defy him.” And the old campaigner 
turned round and slept pretty sound, being rather excited and 
amused by the events of the day — the last day in Bury Street, 
he was determined it should be. “ For it’s impossible to stay 
on with a valet over me and a bankrupt landlady. What good 
can I do this poor devil of a woman ? I’ll give her twenty 
pound — there’s Warrington’s twenty pound, which he had just 
paid — but what’s the use ? She’ll want more, and more, and 
more, and that cormorant Morgan will swallow all. No, 
dammy, I can’t afford to know poor people ; and to-morrow 
I’ll say good-by — to Mrs. Brixham and Mr. Morgan.” 


CHAPTER LXVIII. 

IN WHICH THE MAJOR NEITHER YIELDS HIS MONEY NOR HIS LIFE. 

Early next morning Pendennis’s shutters were opened by 
Morgan, who appeared as usual, with a face perfectly grave and 
respectful, bearing with him the old gentleman’s clothes, cans 
of water, and elaborate toilette requisites. 

“ It’s you, is it ?” said the old fellow from his bed. “I 
sha’n’t take you back again, you understand.” 

“ I ’ave not the least wish to be took back agin, Major 
Pendennis,” Mr. Morgan said with grave dignity, “ nor to serve 
you nor hany man. But as I wish you to be comf’table as long 
as you stay in my house, I came up to do what’s ne’ssary.” 
And once more, and for the last time, Mr. James Morgan laid 
out the silver dressing-case, and strapped the shining razor. 

These offices concluded, he addressed himself to the Major 
with an indescribable solemnity, and said : “ Thinkin’ that you 
would most likely be in want of a respectable pusson, until you 
suited yourself, I spoke to a young man last night, who is ’ere.” 

“ Indeed,” said the warrior in the tent-bed. 

“ He ’ave lived in the fust fam’lies, and I can wouch for his 
respectability.” 

“ You are monstrous polite,” grinned the old Major. And 
the truth is, that after the occurrences of the previous evening, 
Morgan had gone out to his own Club at the “ Wheel of 
Fortune,” and there finding Frosch, a courier and valet just 
returned from a foreign tour with young Lord Cubley, and for 
the present disposable, had represented to Mr. Frosch, that he, 


PENDENNIS . 


708 

Morgan, had had “ a devil of a blow hup with his own Gov’nor, 
and was goin’ to retire from the business haltogether, and that 
if Frosch wanted a tempo’ry job, he might prob’bly have it by 
applying in Bury Street.” 

“ You are very polite,” said the Major, “and your recom- 
mendation, I am sure, will have every weight.” 

Morgan blushed ; he- felt his master was “ a-chaffin’ of him.” 
“ The man have awaited on you before, sir,” he said with great 
dignity. “ Lord De la Pole, sir, gave him to his nephew young 
Lord Cubley, and he have been with him on his foring tour, 
and not wishing to go to Fitzurse Castle, which Frosch’s chest 
is delicate and he cannot bear the cold in Scotland, he is free 
to serve you or not, as you choose,” 

“ I repeat, sir, that you are exceedingly polite,” said the 
Major. “ Come in, Frosch — you will do very well — Mr. Morgan, 

will you have the great kindness to ” 

“ I shall show him what is ne’ssary, sir, and what is custom’ry 
for you to wish to ’ave done. Will you please to take breakfast 
’ere or at the Club, Major Pendennis ? ” 

“With your kind permission, I will breakfast here, and 
afterwards we will make our little arrangements.” 

“ If you please, sir.” 

“ Will you now oblige me by leaving the room ? ” 

Morgan withdrew ; the excessive politeness of his ex- 
employer made him almost as angry as the Major’s bitterest 
words. And whilst the old gentleman is making his mysterious 
toilet, we will also modestly retire. 

After breakfast, Major Pendennis and his new aide-de-camp 
occupied themselves in preparing for their departure. The 
establishment of the old bachelor was not very complicated. 
He encumbered himself with no useless wardrobe. A Bible 
(his mother’s), a road-book, Pen’s novel (calf elegant), and the 
Duke of Wellington’s Despatches, with a few prints, maps, and 
portraits of that illustrious general, and of various sovereigns 
and consorts of this country, and of the General under whom 
Major Pendennis had served in India, formed his literary and 
artistical collection : he was always ready to march at a few 
hours’ notice, and the cases in which he had brought his prop- 
erty into his lodgings some fifteen years before, were still in 
the lofts amply sufficient to receive all his goods. These, the 
young woman who did the work of the house, and who was 
known by the name of Betty to her mistress, and of Slavey 
to Mr. Morgan, brought down from their resting-place, and 
obediently dusted and cleaned under the eyes of the terrible 





A GOOD SHOT. 










































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PENDENNIS. 


7°9 

Morgan. His demeanor was guarded and solemn; he had 
spoken no word as yet to Mrs. Brixham respecting his threats 
of the past night, but he looked as if he would execute them, 
and the poor widow tremblingly awaited her fate. 

Old Pendennis, armed with his cane, superintended the 
package of his goods and chattels, under the hands of Mr. 
Frosch, and the Slavey burned such of his papers as he did 
not care to keep ; flung open doors and closets until they were, 
all empty ; and now all boxes and chests were closed, except 
his desk, which was ready to receive the final accounts of Mr. 
Morgan. 

That individual now made his appearance, and brought his 
books. “ As I wish to speak to you in privick, per’aps you will 
’ave the kindness to request Frosch to step down stairs,” he 
said, on entering. 

“ Bring a couple of cabs, Frosch, if you please — and wait 
down stairs until I ring for you,” said .the Major. Morgan saw 
Frosch down stairs, watched him go along the street upon his 
errand, and produced his books and accounts, which were sim- 
ple and very easily settled. 

“ And now, sir,” said he, having pocketed the check which 
his ex-employer gave him, and signed his name to his book with 
a flourish, “ and now that accounts is closed between us, sir,” 
he said, “ I propose to speak to you as one man to another ” 
(Morgan liked the sound of his own voice ; and, as an indi- 
vidual, indulged in public speaking whenever he could get an 
opportunity, at the Club, or the housekeeper’s room), “ and I 
must tell you, that I’m in fossussion of certing inf amotion. 

“ And may I inquire of what nature, pray ? ” asked the 
Major. 

“ It’s valuble information, Major Pendennis, as you know 
very well. I know of a marriage as is no marriage — of a hon- 
orable Baronet as is no more married than I am ; and which 
his wife is married to somebody else, as you know too, sir.” 

Pendennis at once understood all. “ Fla ! this accounts 
for your behavior. You have been listening at the door, sir, I 
suppose,” said the Major, looking very haughty ; “ I forgot to 
look at the keyhole when I went to that public-house, or I 
might have suspected what sort of a person was behind it.” 

“ I may have my schemes as you may have yours, I sup- 
pose,” answered Morgan. “ I may get my information, and I 
may act on that information and I may find that information 
valuble as anybody else may. A poor servant may have a bit of 
luck as well as a gentleman, mayn’t he ? Don’t you be putting 


PEND ENNIS. 


710 

on your ’aughty looks, sir, and cornin' the aristocrat over me. 
That’s all gammon with me. I’m an Englishman, I am, and 
as good as you.” 

“ To what the devil does this tend, sir ? and how does the 
secret which you have surprised concern me, I should like to 
know ? ” asked Major Pendennis, with great majesty. 

“ How does it concern me, indeed ? how grand we are ! How 
does it concern my nephew, I wonder ? How does it concern my 
nephew’s seat in Parlyment : and to subornation of bigamy ? How 
does it concern that ? What, are you to be the only man to have 
a secret, and to trade on it ? Why shouldn’t I go halves, Major 
Pendennis ? I’ve found it out too. Look here ! I ain’t gom' 
to be unreasonable with you. Make it worth my while, and 
I’ll keep the thing close. Let Mr. Arthur take his seat, and 
his rich wife, if you like ; I don’t want to marry her. But I 
will have my share, as sure as my name’s James Morgan. And 
if I don’t ” 

“ And if you don’t, sir — what ? ” Pendennis asked. 

“ If I don’t, I split, and tell all. I smash Clavering, and 
have him and his wife up for bigamy — so help me, I will ! I 
smash young Hopeful’s marriage, and I show up you and him 
as makin’ use of this secret, in order to squeeze a seat in Parly- 
ment out of Sir Francis, and a fortune out of his wife.” 

“ Mr. Pendennis knows no more of this business than the 
babe unborn, sir,” cried the Major aghast. No more than 
Lady Clavering, than Miss Amory does.” 

“Tell that to the marines, Major,” replied the valet; 
“ that cock won’t fight with me.” 

“ Do you doubt my word, you villain ? ” 

“ No bad language. I don’t care one twopence’a’p’ny 
whether your word’s true or not. I tell you, I intend this to 
be a nice little annuity to me, Major : for I have every one of 
you ; and I ain’t such a fool as to let you go. I should say 
that you might make it five hundred a year to me among you, 
easy. Pay me down the first quarter now, and I’m as mum as 
a mouse. Just give me a note for one twenty-five. There’s 
your check-book on your desk.” 

“ And there’s this too, you villain,” cried the old gentleman. 
In the desk to which the valet pointed was a little double-bar- 
relled pistol, which had belonged to Pendennis’s old patron, 
the Indian commander-in-chief, and which had accompanied 
him in many a campaign. “ One more word, you scoundrel, 
and I’ll shoot you, like a mad dog. Stop — by Jove, I’ll do it 
now. You’ll assault me, will you ? You’ll strike at an old 


PENDRNNIS. 


711 

man, will you, you lying coward ? Kneel down and say your 
prayers, sir, for by the Lord you shall die.” 

The Major’s face glared with rage at his adversary, who 
looked terrified before him for a moment, and at the next, with 
a shriek of “Murder!” sprang towards the open window, 
under which a policeman happened to be on his beat. “ Mur- 
der ! Police ! ” bellowed Mr. Morgan. 

To his surprise, Major Pendennis wheeled away the table 
and walked to the other window, which was also open. He 
beckoned the policeman. “ Come up here, policeman,” he 
said, and then went and placed himself against the door. 

“ You miserable sneak,” he said to Morgan ; “ the pistol 
hasn’t been loaded these fifteen years, as you would have known 
very well, if you had not been such a coward. That policeman 
is coming, and I will have him up, and have your trunks 
searched ; I have reason to believe that you are a thief, sir. I 
know you are. I’ll swear to the things.” 

“You gave ’em to me — you gave ’em to me ! ” cried Mor- 
gan. 

The Major laughed. “ We’ll see,” he said ; and the guilty 
valet remembered some fine lawn-fronted shirts — a certain gold- 
headed cane — an opera-glass, which he had forgotten to bring 
down, and of which he had assumed the use along with certain 
articles of his master’s clothes, which the old dandy neither 
wore nor asked for. 

Policeman X entered ; followed by the scared Mrs. Brixham 
and her maid-of-all-work, who had been at the door and found 
some difficulty in closing it against the street amateurs, who 
wished to see the row. The Major began instantly to speak. 

“ I have had occasion to discharge this drunken scoundrel,” 
he said. “ Both last night and this morning he insulted and 
assaulted me. I am an old man and took up a pistol. You 
see it is not loaded, and this coward cried out before he was 
hurt. I am glad you are come. I was charging him with tak- 
ing my property, and desired to examine his trunks and his 
room.” 

“ The velvet cloak you ain’t worn these three years, nor the 
weskits, and I thought I might take the shirts, and I — I take 
my hoath I intended to put back the hopera-glass,” roared 
Morgan, writhing with rage and terror. 

“ The man acknowledges that he is a thief,” the Major 
said, calmly. “ He has been in my service for years, and I 
have treated him with every kindness and confidence. We will 
go up stairs and examine his trunks.” 


712 


PENDENNIS. 


In those trunks Mr. Morgan had things which he would 
fain keep from public eyes. Mr. Morgan, the bill-discounter, 
gave goods as well as money to his customers. He provided 
young spendthrifts with snuff-boxes and pins and jewels and 
pictures and cigars, and of a very doubtful quality those cigars 
and jewels and pictures were. Their display at a police-office, 
the discovery of his occult profession, and the exposure of 
the Major’s property, which he had appropriated, indeed, 
rather than stolen, — would not have added to the reputation 
of Mr. Morgan. He looked a piteous image of terror and 
discomfiture. 

“ He’ll smash me, will he ? ” thought the Major. “ I’ll 
crush him now, and finish with him.” 

But he paused. He looked at poor Mrs. Brixham’s scared 
face ; and he thought for a moment to himself that the man 
brought to bay and in prison might make disclosures which had 
best be kept secret, and that it was best not to deal too fiercely 
with a desperate man. 

“ Stop,” he said, “ policeman. I’ll speak with this man by 
himself.” 

“ Do you give Mr. Morgan in charge ? ” said the policeman. 

“ I have brought no charge as yet,” the Major said, with a 
significant look at his man. 

“ Thank you, sir,” whispered Morgan, very low. 

“ Go outside the door, and wait there, policeman, if you 
please. — Now, Morgan, you have played one game with me, 
and you have not had the best of it, my good man. No, begad, 
you’ve not had the best of it, though you had the best hand ; 
and you’ve got to pay, too, now, you scoundrel.” 

“ Yes, sir,” said the man. 

“ I’ve only found out, within the last week, the game which 
you have been driving, you villain. Young De Boots, of the 
Blues, recognized you as the man who came to barracks, and 
did business one-third in money, one-third in eau-de-Cologne, 
and one-third in French prints, you confounded demure old 
sinner ! I didn’t miss anything, or care a straw what you’d 
taken, you booby; but I took the shot, and it hit — hit the 
bull’s-eye, begad. Dammy, sir, I’m an old campaigner.” 

“ What do you want with me, sir ? ” 

“ I’ll tell you. Your bills, I suppose, you keep about you 
in that dem’d great leather pocket-book, don’t you ? You’ll 
burn Mrs. Brixham’s bill ? ” 

“ Sir, I ain’t a-goin’ to part with my property,” growled the 


man. 


PENDENNIS. 


7*3 

“You lent her sixty pounds five years ago. She and that 
poor devil of an insurance clerk, her son, have paid you fifty 
pounds a year ever since ; and you have got a bill of sale of 
her furniture, and her note of hand for a hundred and fifty 
pounds. She told me so last night. By Jove, sir, you’ve bled 
that poor woman enough.” 

“ I won’t give it up,” said Morgan. “ If I do I’m ” 

“ Policeman ! ” cried the Major. 

“You shall have the bill,” said Morgan. “You’re not 
going to take money of me, and you a gentleman ? ” 

“ I shall want you directly,” said the Major to X, who here 
entered, and who again withdrew. 

“ No, my good sir,” the old gentleman continued ; “ I have 
not any desire to have farther pecuniary transactions with you ; 
but we will draw out a little paper, which you will have the 
kindness to sign. No, stop ! — you shall write it : you have im- 
proved immensely in writing of late, and have now a very good 
hand. You shall sit down and write, if you please — there, at 
that table — so — let me see — we may as well have the date. 
Write ‘ Bury Street, St. James’s, October 21, 18 — .’ ” 

And Morgan wrote as he was instructed, and as the pitiless 
old Major continued : — 

“I, James Morgan, having come in extreme poverty into 
the service of Arthur Pendennis, Esquire, of Bury Street, St. 
James’s, a Major in her Majesty’s service, acknowledge that I 
received liberal wages and board wages from my employer, 
during fifteen years. — You can’t object to that, I am sure,” said 
the Major. 

“ During fifteen years,” wrote Morgan. 

“ In which time, by my own care and prudence,” the dicta- 
tor resumed, “ I have managed to amass sufficient money to pur- 
chase the house in which my master resides, and besides to effect 
other savings. Amongst other persons from whom I have had 
money, I may mention my present tenant, Mrs. Brixham, who in 
consideration of sixty pounds advanced by me five years since, 
has paid back to me the sum of two hundred and fifty pounds 
sterling, besides giving me a note of hand for one hundred and 
twenty pounds, which I restore to her at the desire of my late 
master, Major Arthur Pendennis, and therewith free her fur- 
niture, of which I had a bill of sale. — Have you written ? ” 

“ I think if this pistol was loaded, I’d blow your brains out,” 
said Morgan. 

“ No, you wouldn’t. You have too great a respect for your 
valuable life, my good. man,” the Major answered. “Let us 
go on and begin a new sentence.” 


PEND ENNIS. 


7 X 4 

“ And having, in return for my master’s kindness, stolen his 
property from him, which I acknowledge to be now up stairs in 
my trunks : and having uttered falsehoods regarding his and 
other honorable families, I do hereby, in consideration of his 
clemency to me, express my regret for uttering these falsehoods, 
and for stealing his property ; and declare that I am not worthy 
of belief, and that I hope — yes begad — that I hope to amend 
for the future. Signed, James Morgan.” 

“ I’m d d if I sign it,” said Morgan. 

“ My good man, it will happen to you, whether you sign or 
no, begad,” said the old fellow, chuckling at his own wit. 
“ There, I shall not use this, you understand, — unless I am 
compelled to do so. Mrs. Brixham, and our friend the police- 
man, will witness it, I dare say, without reading it : and 1 will 
give the old lady back her note of hand, and say, which you 
will confirm, that she and you are quits. I see there is Frosch 
come back with the cab for my trunks ; I shall go to an hotel. 
You may come in now, policeman ; Mr. Morgan and I have 
arranged our little dispute. If Mrs. Brixham will sign this 
paper and you, policeman, will do so, I shall be very much 
obliged to you both. Mrs. Brixham, you and your worthy land- 
lord, Mr. Morgan, are quits. I wish you joy of him. Let 
Frosch come and pack the rest of the things.” 

Frosch, aided by the Slavey, under the calm superintend- 
ence of Mr. Morgan, carried Major Pendennis’s boxes to the 
cab in waiting ; and Mrs. Brixham, when her persecutor was not 
by, came and asked a Heaven’s blessing upon the Major, her 
preserver, and the best and quietest and kindest of lodgers. 
And having given her a finger to shake, which the humble lady 
received with a curtsey, and over which she was ready to make 
a speech full of tears, the Major cut short that valedictory 
oration, and walked out of the house to the hotel in Jermyn 
Street, which was not many steps from Morgan’s door. 

That individual, looking forth from the parlor window, dis- 
charged anything but blessings at his parting guest ; but the 
stout old boy could afford not to be frightened at Mr. Morgan, 
and flung him a look of great contempt and humor as he strut- 
ted away with his cane. 

Major Pendennis had not quitted his house of Bury Street 
many hours, and Mr. Morgan was enjoying his otium in a dig- 
nified manner, surveying the evening fog, and smoking a cigar, 
on the doorsteps, when Arthur Pendennis, Esq., the hero of 
this history, made his appearance at the well-known door. 


PENDENNIS. 


7 X S 

“ My uncle out, I suppose, Morgan ? ” he said to the func- 
tionary ; knowing full well that to smoke was treason, in the 
presence of the Major. . 

“ Major Pendennis is hout, sir,” said Morgan, with gravity, 
bowing, but not touching the elegant cap which he wore. 
“ Major Pendennis have left this ’ouse to-day, sir, and I have 
no longer the honor of being in his service, sir.” 

“ Indeed, and where is he ? ” 

“ I believe he ’ave taken tempor’y lodgings at Cox’s ’otel, 
in Jummin Street,” said Mr. Morgan ; and added, after a pause, 
“ Are you in town for some time, pray, sir ? Are you in Cham- 
bers ? I should like to have the honor of waiting on you there 
and would be thankful if you would favor me with a quarter of 
an hour.” 

“ Do you want my uncle to take you back ? ” asked Arthur, 
insolent and good-natured. 

“I want no such a thing ; I’d see him — ” the man glared 
at him for a minute, but he stopped. “ No, sir, thank you,” he 
said in a softer voice ; “it’s only with you that I wish to speak, 
on some business which concerns you ; and perhaps you would 
favor me by walking into my house.” 

“ If it is but for a minute or two, I will listen to you, 
Morgan,” said Arthur ; and thought to himself, “ I suppose the 
fellow wants me to patronize him ; ” and he entered the house. 
A card was already in the front windows, proclaiming that 
apartments were to be let, and having introduced Mr. Pen- 
dennis into the dining-room, and offered him a chair, Mr. 
Morgan took one himself, and proceeded to convey some in- 
formation to him, of which the reader has already had cognizance. 


CHAPTER LXIX. 

IN WHICH PENDENNIS COUNTS HIS EGGS. 

Our friend had arrived in London on that day only, though 
but for a brief visit, and having left some fellow travellers at an 
hotel to which he had convoyed them from the West, he has- 
tened to the Chambers in Lamb Court, which were basking in 
as much sun as chose to visit that dreary but not altogether 
comfortless building. Freedom stands in lieu of sunshine in 


PENDENNIS. 


716 

Chambers ; and Templars grumble, but take their ease in their 
Inn. Pen’s domestic announced to him that Warrington was 
in Chambers too, and, of course, Arthur ran up to his friend’s 
room straightway, and found it, as of old, perfumed with the 
pipe, and George once more at work at his newspapers and 
reviews. The pair greeted each other with the rough cordiality 
which young Englishmen use one to another : and which carries 
a great deal of warmth and kindness under its rude exterior. 
Warrington smiled and took his pipe out of his mouth, ,and 
said, “ Well, young one ! ” Pen advanced and held out his 
hand, and said, “ How are you, old boy ? ” And so this greet- 
ing passed between two friends who had not seen each other 
for months. Alphonse and Frede'ric would have rushed into 
each other’s arms and shrieked Ce bon coeur! ce cher Alphonse 1 
over each other’s shoulders. Max and Wilhelm would have 
bestowed half a dozen kisses, scented with Havana, upon 
each other’s mustaches. “ Well, young one ! ” “ How are 
you, old boy ? ” is what two Britons say : after saving each 
other’s lives, possibly, the day before. To-morrow they will 
leave off shaking hands, and only wag their heads at one 
another as they come to breakfast. Each has for the other 
the very warmest confidence and regard ; each would share his 
purse with the other : and hearing him attacked, would break 
out in the loudest and most enthusiastic praise of his friend ; 
but they part with a mere Good-by, they meet with a mere 
How-d’you-do ? and they don’t write to each other in the in- 
terval. Curious modesty, strange stoical decorum of English 
friendship ! “ Yes, we are not demonstrative like those con- 

founded foreigners,” says Hardman ; who not only shows no 
friendship, but never felt any all his life long. 

“ Been in Switzerland ? ” says Pen. “ Yes,” says War- 
rington. “ Couldn’t find a bit of tobacco fit to smoke till we 
came to Strasburg, where I got some caporal.” The man’s 
mind is full, very likely, of the great sights which he has seen, 
of the great emotions with which the vast works of nature have 
inspired it. But his enthusiasm is too coy to show itself, even 
to his closest friend, and he veils it with a cloud of tobacco. 
He will speak more fully of confidential evenings, however, 
and write ardently and frankly about that which he is shy of 
saying. The thoughts and experience of his travel will come 
forth in his writings ; as the learning, which he never displays 
in talk, enriches his style with pregnant allusion and brilliant 
illustration, colors his generous eloquence, and points his wit. 
The elder gives a rapid account of the places which he has 


PENDENNIS. 


7 l 7 

visited in his tour. He has seen Switzerland, North Italy, 
and the Tyrol — he has come home by Vienna, and Dresden, 
and the Rhine. He speaks about these places in a shy sulky 
voice, as if he had rather not mention them at all, and as if the 
sight of them had rendered him very unhappy. The outline of 
the elder man’s tour thus gloomily sketched out, the young one 
begins to speak. He has been in the country — very much 
bored — canvassing — uncommonly slow — he is here for a day or 
two, and going on to — to the neighborhood of Tunbridge Wells, 
to some friends — that will be uncommonly slow, too. How 
hard it is to make an Englishman acknowledge that he is happy ! 

“ And the seat in Parliament, Pen ? Have you made it all 
right ? ” asks Warrington. 

“All right, — as soon as Parliament meets and a new writ 
can be issued, Clavering retires, and I step into his shoes,” 
says Pen. 

“ And under which king does Bezonian speak or die ? ” 
asked Warrington. “ Do we come out as Liberal Conservative, 
or as Government man, or on our own hook ? ” 

“ Hem ! There are no politics now ; every man’s politics, 
at least, are pretty much the same. I have not got acres enough 
to make me a Protectionist ; nor could I be one, I think, if I 
had all the land in the county. I shall go pretty much with 
Government, and in advance of them upon some social questions 
which I have been getting up during the vacation ; — don’t grin, 
you old Cynic, I have been getting up the Blue Books, and 
intend to come out rather strong on the Sanitary and Coloni- 
zation questions.” 

“ We reserve to ourselves the liberty of voting against 
Government, though we are generally friendly. We are, how- 
ever, friends of the people avant tout. We give lectures at the 
Clavering Institute, and shake hands with the intelligent me- 
chanics. We think the franchise ought to be very considerably 
enlarged ; at the same time we are free to accept office some 
day, when the House has listened to a few crack speeches from 
us, and the Administration perceives our merit.” 

“ I am not Moses,” said Pen, with, as usual, somewhat of 
melancholy in his voice. “ I have no laws from Heaven to 
bring down to the people from the mountain. I don’t belong 
to the mountain at all, or set up to be a leader and reformer of 
mankind. My faith is not strong enough for that ; nor my 
vanity, nor my hypocrisy, great enough. I will tell no lies, 
George, that I promise you ; and do no more than coincide in 
those which are necessary and pass current, and can’t be got 


PENDENNIS 


718 

in without recalling the whole circulation. Give a man at least 
the advantage of his skeptical turn. If I find a good thing to 
say in the House, I will say it ; a good measure, I will support 
it • a fair place, I will take it, and be glad of my luck. But I 
would no more flatter a great man than a mob ; and now you 
know as much about my politics as I do. What call have I to 
be a Whig? Whiggism is not a divine institution. Why not 
vote with the Liberal Conservatives ? They have done for the 
nation what the Whigs would never have done without them. 
Who converted both ? — the Radicals and the country outside. 
I think the Morning Post is often right, and Punch is often 
wrong. I don’t profess a call, but take advantage of a chance. 
Par tons P autre chose.” 

“ The next thing at your heart, after ambition, is love, I sup- 
pose ? ” Warrington said. “ How have our young loves pros- 
pered ? Are we going to chance our condition, and give up 
our Chambers ? Are you going to divorce me, Arthur, and 
take unto yourself a wife ? ” 

“ I suppose so. She is very good natured and lively. She 
sings, and she don’t mind smoking. She’ll have a fair fortune 
■ — I don’t know how much — but my uncle augurs everything 
from the Begum’s generosity, and says that she will come down 
very handsomely* And I think Blanche is dev’lish fond of 
me,” said Arthur, with a sigh. 

“ That means that we accept her caresses and her money.” 

“ Haven’t we said before, that life was a transaction ? ” 
Pendennis said. “ I don’t pretend to break my heart about 
her. I have told her pretty fairly what my feelings are — and 
— and have engaged myself to her. And since I saw her last, 
and for the last two months especially, whilst I have been in 
the country, I think she has been growing fonder and fonder of 
me ; and letters to me, and especially, to Laura, seem to show 
it. Mine have been simple enough — no raptures nor vows, you 
understand — but looking upon the thing as an affaire faite; and 
not desirous to hasten or defer the completion.” 

“ And Laura ? how is she ? ” Warrington asked frankly. 

“Laura, George,” said Pen, looking his friend hard in his 
face — “ by Heaven, Laura is the best, and noblest, and dearest 
girl the sun ever shone upon.” His own voice fell as he spoke : 
it seemed as if he could hardly utter the words : he stretched 
out his hand to his comrade, who took it and nodded his head. 

“ Have you only found out that now, young un ? ” Warring- 
ton said after a pause. 

“ Who has not learned things too late, George ? ” cried 


PEND ENNIS 


719 

Arthur, m his impetuous way, gathering words and emotion as 
he went on. “ Whose life is not a disappointment ? Who 
carries his heart entire to the grave without a mutilation ? I 
never knew anybody who was happy quite : or who has not had 
to ransom himself out of the hands of Fate with the payment of 
some dearest treasure or other. Lucky if we are left alone 
afterwards, when we have paid our fine, and if the tyrant visits 
us no more. Suppose I have found out that I have lost the 
greatest prize in the world, now that it can’t be mine — that for 
years I had an angel under my tent, and let her go ? — am I the 
only one — ah, dear old boy, am I the only one ? And do you 
think my lot is easier to bear because I own that I deserve it ? 
She’s gone from us. God’s blessing be with her ! She might 
have stayed, and I lost her ; it’s like Undine : isn’t it, George ? ” 

“ She was in this room once,” said George. 

He saw her there — he heard the sweet low voice — he saw 
the sweet smile and eyes shining so kindly — the face remem- 
bered so fondly — thought of in what night-watches — blest and 
loved always — gone now ! A glass that had held a nosegay — 
a Bible with Helen’s handwriting — were all that were left him 
of that brief flower of his life. Say it is a dream : say it 
passes : better the recollection of a dream than an aimless 
waking from a blank stupor. 

The two friends sat in silence awhile, each occupied with 
his own thoughts and aware of the other’s. Pen broke it pres- 
ently, by saying that he must go and seek for his uncle, and 
report progress to the old gentleman. The Major had written 
in a very bad-humor ; the Major was getting old. “ I should 
like to see you in Parliament, and snugly settled with a comfort- 
able house and an heir to the name before I make my bow. 
Show me these,” the Major wrote, “and then, let old Arthur 
Pendennis make room for the younger fellows ; he has walked 
the Pall Mall pave long enough.” 

“ There is a kindness about the old heathen,” said Warring- 
ton. “ He cares for somebody besides himself, at least for 
some other part of himself besides that which is buttoned into 
his own coat ; — for you and your race. He would like to see 
the progeny of the Pendennises multiplying and increasing, and 
hopes that they may inherit the land. The old patriarch 
blesses you from the Club window of Bays’s, and is carried off 
and buried under the flags of St. James’s Church, in sight of 
Piccadilly, and the cab-stand, and the carriages going to the 
levee. It is an edifying ending.” 

“The new blood I bring into the family,” mused Pen, “is 


PEND ENNIS. 


720 

rather tainted. If I had chosen, I think my father-in-law 
Amory would not have been the progenitor I should have 
desired for my race ; not my grandfather-in-law Snell ; nor our 
oriental ancestors. By the way. who was Amory ? Amory was 
lieutenant of an Indiaman. Blanche wrote some verses about 
him, — -about the storm, the mountain wave, seaman’s grave, the 
gallant father, and that sort of thing. Amory was drowned 
commanding a country ship between Calcutta and Sydney ; 
Amory and the Begum weren’t happy together. She has been 
unlucky in her selection of husbands, the good old lady, for, 
between ourselves, a more despicable creature than Sir Francis 

Clavering, of Clavering Park, Baronet, never ” “ Never 

legislated for his country,” broke in Warrington ; at which Pen 
blushed rather. 

“ By the way, at Baden,” said Warrington, “ I found our 
friend the Chevalier Strong in great state, and wearing his 
orders. He told me that he had quarrelled with Clavering, of 
whom he seemed to have almost as bad an opinion as you have, 
and in fact, I think, though I will not be certain, confided to 
me his opinion, that Clavering was an utter scoundrel. That 
fellow Bloundell, who taught you card-playing at Oxbridge, was 
with Strong ; and time, I think, has brought out his valuable 
qualities, and rendered him a more accomplished rascal than 
he was during your undergraduateship. But the king of the 
place was the famous Colonel Altamont, who was carrying all 
before him, giving fetes to the whole society, and breaking the 
bank, it was said.” 

“ My uncle knows something about that fellow — Clavering 
knows something about him. There’s something louche regard' 
ing him. But come ! I must go to Bury Street, like a dutiful 
nephew.” And, taking his hat, Pen prepared to go. 

“I will walk, too,” said Warrington. Ana they descended 
the stairs, stopping, however, at Pen’s chambers, which, as the 
reader has been informed, were now on the lower story. 

Here Pen began sprinkling himself with eau-de-Cologne, 
and carefully scenting his hair and whiskers with that odorifer- 
ous water. 

“What is the matter? You’ve not been smoking. Is it 
my pipe that has poisoned you ? ” growled Warrington. 

“ I am going to call upon some women,” said Pen. “ I’m — 
I’m going to dine with ’em. They are passing through town, 
and are at an hotel in Jermyn Street.” 

Warrington looked with good-natured interest at the young 
fellow dandifying himself up to a pitch of completeness ; and 


PENDENNIS. 


721 

appearing at length in a gorgeous shirt-front and neck-cloth, 
fresh gloves, and glistening boots. George had a pair of thick 
high-lows, and his old shirt was torn about the breast, and 
ragged at the collar, where his blue beard had worn it. 

“ Well, young un,” said he simply, “ I like you to be a buck, 
somehow. When I walk about with you, it is as if I had a rose 
in my button-hole. And you are still affable. I don’t think 
there is any young fellow in the Temple turns out like you ; and 
I don’t believe you were ever ashamed of walking with me yet.” 

“ Don’t laugh at me, George,” said Pen. 

“ I say, Pen,” continued the other, sadly, “if you write — if 
you write to Laura, I wish you would say ‘ God bless her ’ from 
me.” 

Pen blushed ; and then looked at Warrington ; and then — • 
and then burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughing. 

“ I’m going to dine with her,” he said. “ I brought her and 
Lady Rockminster up from the country to-day — made two days 
of it — slept last night at Bath — I say, George, come and dine, 
too. I may ask any one I please, and the old lady is constantly 
talking about you.” 

George refused. George had an article to write. George 
hesitated ; and oh, strange to say ! at last he agreed to go. It 
was agreed that they should go and call upon the ladies ; and 
they marched away in high spirits to the hotel in Jermyn Street. 
Once more the dear face shone upon him ; once more the sweet 
voice spoke to him, and the tender hand pressed a welcome. 

There still wanted half an hour to dinner. “ You will go 
and see your uncle now, Mr. Pendennis,” old Lady Rockminster 
said. “You will not bring him to dinner — no — his old stories 
are intolerable ; and I want to talk to Mr. Warrington ; I dare 
say he will amuse us. I think we have heard all your stories. 
We have been together for two whole days, and I think we are 
getting tired of each other.” 

So, obeying her ladyship’s orders, Arthur went down stairs 
and walked to his uncle’s lodgings. 

46 


722 


PENDENNIS. 


CHAPTER LXX. 

FIAT JUSTITIA. 

The dinner was served when Arthur returned, and Lady 
Rockminster began to scold him for arriving late. But Laura, 
looking at her cousin, saw that his face was so pale and scared 
that she interrupted her imperious patroness ; and asked, with 
tender alarm, what had happened ? Was Arthur ill ? 

Arthur drank a large bumper of sherry. “ I have heard 
the most extraordinary news ; I will tell you afterwards, ” he 
said, looking at the servants. He was very nervous and agi- 
tated during the dinner. “ Don’t tramp and beat so with your 
feet under the table,” Lady Rockminster said. “You have 
trodden on Fido and upset his saucer. You see Mr. Warring- 
ton keeps his boots quiet.” 

At the dessert — it seemed as if the unlucky dinner would 
never be over — Lady Rockminster said, “ This dinner has been 
exceedingly stupid. I suppose something has happened, and 
that you want to speak to Laura. I will go and have my nap. 
I am not sure that I shall have any tea — Good-night, Mr. 
Warrington. You must come again, and when there is no 
business to talk about.” And the old lady, tossing up her 
head, walked away from the room with great dignity. 

George and the others had risen with her, and Warrington 
was about to go away, and was saying “ Good-night ” to Laura, 
who, of course, was looking much alarmed about her cousin, 
when Arthur said, “ Pray, stay, George. You should hear my 
news too, and give me your counsel in this case. I hardly 
know how to act in it.” 

“ It’s something about Blanche, Arthur,” said Laura, her 
heart beating, and her cheek blushing, as she thought it had 
never blushed in her life. 

“Yes — and the most extraordinary story,” said Pen. 
“ When I left you to go to my uncle’s lodgings, I found his 
servant, Morgan, who has been with him so long, at the door, 
and he said that he and his master had parted that morning; 
that my uncle had quitted the house, and had gone to an hotel 
— this hotel. I asked for him when I came in ; but he was 
gone out to dinner. Morgan then said that he had something 


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of a most important nature to communicate to me, and begged 
me to step into the house ; his house it is now. It appears the 
scoundrel has saved a great deal of money whilst in my uncle’s 
service, and is now a capitalist and a millionaire, for what 1 
know. Well, I went into the house, and what do you think 
he told me ? This must be a secret between us all — at least if 
we can keep it, now that it is in possession of that villain. 
Blanche’s father is not dead. He has come to life again. The 
marriage between Clavering and the Begum is no marriage.” 

“ And Blanche, I suppose, is her grandfather’s heir ? ” said 
Warrington. 

“ Perhaps : but the child of what a father ! Amory is an 
escaped convict — Clavering knows it ; my uncle knows it — and 
it was with this piece of information held over Clavering in 
ierrorem that the wretched old man got him to give up his 
borough to me.” 

“ Blanche doesn’t know it,” said Laura, “ nor poor Lady 
Clavering ? ” 

“ No,” said Pen ; “ Blanche does not even know the history 
of her father. She knew that he and her mother had separ- 
ated, and had heard as a- child, from Bonner, her nurse, that 
Mr. Amory was drowned in New South Wales. He was there 
as a convict, not as a ship’s captain, as the poor girl thought. 
Lady Clavering has told me that they were not happy, and that 
her husband was a bad character. She would tell me ail, she 
said, some day : and I remember her saying to me, with tears 
in her eyes, that it was hard for a woman to be forced to own 
that she was glad to hear her husband was dead : and that 
twice in her life she should have chosen so badly. What is to 
be done now ? The man can’t show and claim his wife : death 
is probably over him if he discovers himself : return to trans- 
portation certainly. But the rascal has held the threat of dis- 
covery over Clavering for some time past, and has extorted 
money from him time after time.” 

“ It is our friend Colonel Altamont, of course,” said War- 
rington : “I see all now.” 

“ If the rascal comes back,” continued Arthur, “ Morgan, 
who knows his secret, will use it over him — and having it in 
his possession, proposes to extort money from us all. The 

d d rascal supposed I was cognizant of it,” said Pen, white 

with anger ; “ asked me if I would give him an annuity to keep 
it quiet ; threatened me, me, as if I was trafficking with this 
wretched old Begum’s misfortune ; and would extort a seat in 
Parliament out of that miserable Clavering. Good heavens 1 


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7 2 4 

was, my uncle mad, to tamper in such a conspiracy? Fancy 
our mother’s son, Laura, trading on such a treason ! ” 

“ I can’t fancy it, dear Arthur,” said Laura, seizing Arthur’s 
hand, and kissing it. 

“No!” broke out Warrington’s deep voice, with a tremor; 
he surveyed the two generous and loving young people with a 
pang of indescribable love and pain. “No. Our boy can’t 
meddle with such a wretched intrigue as that. Arthur Pen- 
dennis can’t marry a convict’s daughter ; and sit in Parliament 
as Member for the hulks. You must wash your hands of the 
whole affair, Pen. You must break off. You must give no 
explanations of why and wherefore, but state that family reasons 
render a match impossible. It is better that those poor women 
should fancy you false to your word than that they should know 
the truth. Besides, you can get from that dog Clavering — I can 
fetch that for you easily enough — an acknowledgment that the 
reasons which you have given to him as the head of the family 
are amply sufficient for breaking off the union. Don’t you 
think with me, Laura ? ” He scarcely dared to look her in the 
face as he spoke. Any lingering hope that he might have — • 
any feeble hold that he might feel upon the last spar of his 
wretched fortune, he knew he was casting away ; and he let the 
wave of his calamity close over him. Pen had started up 
whilst he was speaking, looking eagerly at him. He turned his 
head away. He saw Laura rise up also and go to Pen, and 
once more take his hand and kiss it. “ She thinks so too — 
God bless her ! ” said George. 

“ Her father’s shame is not Blanche’s fault, dear Arthur, is 
it ? ” Laura said, very pale, and speaking very quickly. “ Sup- 
pose you had been married, would you desert her because she 
had done no wrong ? Are you not pledged to her ? Would 
you leave her because she is in misfortune ? And if she is 
unhappy, wouldn’t you console her ? Our mother would, had 
she been here.” And, as she spoke, the kind girl folded her 
arms round him, and buried her face upon his heart. 

“ Our mother is an angel with God,” Pen sobbed out. “ And 
you are the dearest and best of women — the dearest, the dearest, 
and the best. Teach me my duty. Pray for me that I may do 
it — pure heart. God bless you — God bless you, my sister.” 

“Amen,” groaned out Warrington, with his head in his 
hands. “ She is right,” he murmured to himself. “ She can’t 
do any wrong, I think — that girl.” Indeed, she looked and 
smiled like an angel. Many a day after, he saw that smile — 
saw her radiant face as she looked up at Pen — saw her putting 


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725 

back her curls, blushing and smiling, and still looking fondly 
towards him. 

She leaned for a moment her little fair hand on the table, 
playing on it. “And now, and now,” she said, looking at the 
two gentlemen — 

“ And what now ? ” asked George. 

“ And now we will have some tea,” said Miss Laura, with 
her smile. 

But before this unromantic conclusion to a rather senti- 
mental scene could be suffered to take place, a servant brought 
word that Major Pendennis had returned to the hotel, and was 
waiting to see his nephew. Upon this announcement, Laura, 
not without some alarm, and an appealing look at Pen, which 
said, “ Behave yourself well — hold to the right, and do your 
duty — be gentle, but firm with your uncle ” — Laura, we say, 
with these warnings written in her face, took leave of the two 
gentlemen, and retreated to her dormitory. Warrington, who 
was not generally fond of tea, yet grudged that expected cup 
very much. Why could not old Pendennis have come in an 
hour later ? Well, an hour sooner or later, what matter? The 
hour strikes at last. The inevitable moment comes to say 
Farewell. The hand is shaken, the door closed, and the friend 
gone ; and, the brief joy over, you are alone. “ In which of 
those many windows of the hotel does her light beam ? ” per- 
haps he asks himself as he passes down the street. He strides 
away to the smoking-room of a neighboring Club, and there 
applies himself to his usual solace of a cigar. Men are brawl- 
ing and talking loud about politics, opera-girls, horse-racing, the 
atrocious tyranny of the committee ; — bearing this secret about 
him, he enters into this brawl. Talk away, each louder than 
the other. Rattle and crack jokes. Laugh and tell your wild 
stories. It is strange to take one’s place and part in the midst 
of the smoke and din, and think every man here has his secret 
ego most likely, which is sitting lonely and apart, away in the 
private chamber, from the loud game in which the rest of us is 
joining ! 

Arthur, as he traversed the passages of the hotel, felt his 
anger rousing up within him. He was indignant to think that 
yonder old gentleman whom he was about to meet, should have 
made him such a tool and puppet, and so compromised his 
honor and good name. The old fellow’s hand was very cold 
and shaky when Arthur took it. He was coughing ; he was 
grumbling over the fire ; Frosch could not bring his dressing- 


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726 

gown or arrange his papers as that d d confounded impm 

dent scoundrel of a Morgan. The old gentleman bemoaned 
himself, and cursed Morgan’s ingratitude with peevish pathos. 

“ The confounded impudent scoundrel ! He was drunk 
last night, and challenged me to fight him, Pen : and begad, at 
one time I was so excited that I thought I should have driven 
a knife into him ; and the infernal rascal has made ten thou- 
sand pound, I believe — and deserves to be hanged, and will 
be ; but, curse him ! I wish he could have lasted out my time. 
He knew all my ways, and. dam my, when I rang the bell, the 
confounded thief brought the thing I wanted — not like that 
stupid German lout. And what sort of time have you had in 
the country ? Been a good deal with Lady Rockininster? You 
can’t do better. She is one of the old school — vieille ecole , 
bonne ecole, hey ? Dammy, they don’t make gentlemen and 
ladies now ; and in fifty years you’ll hardly know one man 
from another. But they’ll last my time. I ain’t long for this 
business : I am getting very old, Pen, my boy ; and, gad, I was 
thinking to-day, as I was packing up my little library, there’s a 
Bible amongst the books that belonged to my poor mother ; I 
would like you to keep that, Pen. I was thinking, sir, that 
you would most likely open the box when it was your property, 
and the old fellow was laid under the sod, sir.” And the 
Major coughed and wagged his old head over the fire. 

His age — his kindness, disarmed Pen’s anger somewhat, 
and made Arthur feel no little compunction for the deed which 
he was about to do. He knew that the announcement which 
he was about to make would destroy the darling hope of the 
old gentleman’s life, and create in his breast a woeful anger 
and commotion. 

“Hey — hey — I’m off, sir,” nodded the Elder; “but I’d 
like to read a speech of yours in the Times before I go — 4 Mr. 
Pendennis said : Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking’ — 
hey, sir ? hey, Arthur ? Begad, you look dev’lish well and 
healthy, sir. I always said my brother Jack would bring the 
family right. You must go down into the West, and buy the 
old estate, sir. Nec tenui pennd, hey ? We’ll rise again, sir — 
rise again on the wing — and, begad, 1 shouldn’t be surprised 
that you will be a Baronet before you die.” 

His words smote Pen. “ And it is I,” he thought, “ that 
am going to fling down the poor old fellow’s air-castle. Well, 
it must be. Here goes. — I — I went into your lodgings at Bury 
Street, though I did not find you,” Pen slowly began — 44 and I 
talked with Morgan, uncle.” 


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727 

“ Indeed ! ” The old gentleman’s cheek began to flush in- 
voluntarily, and he muttered, “ The cat’s out of the bag now, 
begad ! ” 

He told me a story, sir, which gave me the deepest sur- 
prise and pain,” said Pen. 

The Major tried to look unconcerned. “ What — that story 
about — about Whatdoyoucall’em, hey ? ” 

“ About Miss Amory’s father — about Lady Clavering’s first 
husband, and who he is, and what.” 

“ Hem — a devilish awkward affair ! ” said the old man, 
rubbing his nose. “ I — I’ve been aware of that — eh — con- 
founded circumstance for some time.” 

“ I wish I had known it sooner, or not at all,” said Arthur, 
gloomily. 

“ He is all safe,” thought the Senior, greatly relieved. 
“ Gad ! I should have liked to keep it from you altogether — 
and from those two poor women, who are as innocent as un- 
born babes in the transaction.” 

“You are right. There is no reason why the two women 
should hear it ; and I shall never tell them — though that vil- 
lain, Morgan, perhaps may,” Arthur said gloomily. “ He seems 
disposed to trade upon his secret, and has already proposed 
terms of ransom to me. I wish I had known of the matter 
earlier, sir. It is not a very pleasant thought to me that I am 
engaged to a convict’s daughter.” 

“ The very reason why I kept it from you — my dear boy. 
But Miss Amory is not a convict’s daughter, don’t you see? 
Miss Amory is the daughter of Lady Clavering, with fifty or 
sixty thousand pounds for a fortune ; and her father-in-law, a 
Baronet and country gentleman, of high reputation, approves 
of the match, and gives up his seat in Parliament to his son-in- 
law. What can be more simple ? ” 

“ Is it true, sir ? ” 

“ Begad, yes, it is true, of course it’s true. Amory’s dead. 
I tell you he is dead. The first sign of life he shows, he is 
dead. He can’t appear. We have him at a dead-lock, like the 
fellow in the play — the Critic, hey? — devilish amusing play, 
that Critic. Monstrous witty man Sheridan ; and so was his 
son. By Gad, sir, when I was at the Cape, I remember ” 

The old gentleman’s garrulity, and wish to conduct Arthur 
to the Cape, perhaps arose from a desire to avoid the subject 
which was nearest his nephew’s heart ; but Arthur broke out, 
interrupting him — “ if you had told me this tale sooner, I 
believe you would have spared me and yourself a great deal of 


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728 

pain and disappointment ; and I should not have found myself 
tied to an engagement from which I can’t, in honor recede.” 

“No, begad, we’ve fixed you — and a man who’s fixed to a 
seat in Parliament, and a pretty girl, with a couple of thousand 
a year, is fixed to no bad thing, let me tell you,” said the old 
man. 

“ Great Heaven, sir ! ” said Arthur ; “ are you blind ? Can’t 
you see ? ” 

“ See what, young gentleman ? ” asked the other. 

“ See, that rather than trade upon this secret of Amory’s,” 
Arthur cried out, “ I would go and join my father-in-law at the 
hulks ! See, that rather than take a seat in Parliament as a 
bribe from Clavering for silence, I would take the spoons off 
the table ! See, that you have given me a felon’s daughter for 
a wife ; doomed me to poverty and shame ; cursed my career 
when it might have been — when it might have been so different 
but for you ! Don’t you see that we have been playing a guilty 
game, and have been overreached ; — that in offering to marry 
this poor girl, for the sake of her money, and the advancement 
she would bring, I was degrading myself, and prostituting my 
honor ? ” 

“ What in Heaven’s name do you mean sir ? ” cried the old 
man. 

“ I mean to say that there is a measure of baseness which I 
can’t pass,” Arthur said. “ I have no other words for it, and 
am sorry if they hurt you. I have felt, for months past, that 
my conduct in this affair has been wicked, sordid and worldly. 
I am rightly punished by the event, and having sold myself for 
money and a seat in Parliament, by losing both.” 

“ How do you mean that you lose either ? ” shrieked the old 
gentleman. “ Who the devil’s to take your fortune or your seat 
away from you ? By G — , Clavering shall give ’em to you. You 
shall have every shilling of eighty thousand pounds.” 

“ I’ll keep my promise to Miss Amory, sir,” said Arthur. 

“And, begad, her parents shall keep theirs to you.” 

“ Not so, please God,” Arthur answered. “ I have sinned, 
but, Heaven help me, I will sin no more. I will let Clavering 
off from that bargain which was made without my knowledge. 
I will take no money with Blanche but that which was originally 
settled upon her ; and I will try to make her happy. You have 
done it You have brought this on me, sir. But you knew no 
better : and I forgive ” 

“ Arthur — in God’s name — in your father’s, who, by Heav- 
ens, was the proudest man alive, and had the honor of the 


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729 

family always at heart — in mine — for the sake of a poor broken* 
down old fellow, who has always been dev’lish fond of you— 
don’t fling this chance away — I pray you, I beg you, I implore 
you, my dear, dear boy, don’t fling this chance away. It’s the 
making of you. You’re sure to get on. You’ll be a Baronet ; 
it’s three thousand a year : damrny, on my knees, there, I beg of 
you don’t do this.” 

And the old man actually sank down on his knees, and 
seizing one of Arthur’s hands, looked up piteously at him. It 
was cruel to remark the shaking hands, the wrinkled and quiver- 
ing face, the old eyes weeping and winking, the broken voice. 
“Ah, sir,” said Arthur, with a groan, “you have brought pain 
enough on me, spare me this. You have wished me to marry 
Blanche. I marry her. For God’s sake, sir, rise ! I can’t 
bear it.” 

“ You — you mean to say that you will take her as a beggar, 
and be one yourself ? ” said the old gentleman, rising up and 
coughing violently. 

“ I look at her as a person to whom a great calamity has 
befallen, and to whom I am promised. She cannot help the 
misfortune ; and as she had my word when she was prosperous, 
I shall not withdraw it now she is poor. I will not take Claver- 
ing’s seat, unless afterwards it should be given of his free will. 
I will not have a shilling more than her original fortune.” 

“ Have the kindness to ring the bell,” said the old gentle- 
man. “I have done my best, and said my say; and I’m a dev’lish 
old fellow. And — and — it don’t matter. And — and Shakspeare 
was right — and Cardinal Wolsey — begad — ‘and had I but 
served my God as I’ve served you ’ — yes, on my knees, by Jove, 
to my own nephew — I mightn’t have been — Good-night, sir, 
you needn’t trouble yourself to call again.” 

Arthur took his hand, which the old man left to him ; it was 
quite passive and clammy. He looked very much oldened ; 
and it seem as if the contest and defeat had quite broken him. 

On the next day he kept his bed, and refused to see his 
nephew. 


73 ° 


PENDENNIS. 


CHAPTER LXXI. 

IN WHICH THE DECKS BEGIN TO CLEAR. 

When, arrayed in his dressing-gown, Pen walked up, ac- 
cording to custom, to Warrington’s chambers next morning, to 
inform his friend of the issue of the last night’s interview with 
his uncle, and to ask, as usual, for George’s advice and opinion, 
Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, was the only person whom Arthur 
found in the dear old chambers. George had taken a carpet- 
bag, and was gone. His address was to his brother’s house in 
Suffolk. Packages, addressed to the newspaper and review for 
which he wrote, lay on the table, awaiting delivery. 

“ I found him at the table, when I came, the dear gentle- 
man ! ” Mrs. Flanagan said, “ writing at his papers, and one of 
the candles was burned out ; and hard as his bed is, he wasn’t 
in it all night, sir.” 

Indeed, having sat at the Club until the brawl there became 
intolerable to him, George had walked home, and had passed 
the night finishing some work on which he was employed, and 
to the completion of which he bent himself with all his might. 
The labor was done, and the night was worn away somehow, 
and the tardy November dawn came and looked in on the 
young man as he sat over his desk. In the next day’s paper, 
or quarter’s review, many of us very likely admired the work of 
his genius, the variety of his illustration, the fierce vigor of his 
satire, the depth of his reason. There was no hint in his 
writing of the other thoughts which occupied him, and always 
accompanied him in his work : a tone more melancholy than 
was customary, a satire more bitter and impatient than that 
which he afterwards showed, may have marked the writings of 
this period of his life to the very few persons who knew his 
style or his name. We have said before, could we know the 
man’s feeling as well as the author’s thoughts — how interesting 
most books would be ! — more interesting than merry. I sup- 
pose harlequin’s face behind his mask is always grave, if not 
melancholy — certainly each man who lives by the pen, and 
happens to read this, must remember, if he will, his own ex- 
periences, and recall many solemn hours of solitude and labor. 
What a constant care sat at the side of the desk and accom- 
panied him ! Fever or sickness were lying possibly in the next 


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73i 

room ; a sick child might be there, with a wife watching over it 
terrified and in prayer ; or grief might be bearing him down, 
and the cruel mist before the eyes rendering the paper scarce 
visible as he wrote on it, and the inexorable necessity drove on 
the pen. What man among us has not had nights and hours 
like these ? But to the manly heart — severe as these pangs 
are, they are endurable : long as the night seems, the dawn 
comes at last, and the wounds heal, and the fever abates, and 
rest comes, and you can afford to look back on the past misery 
with feelings that are anything but bitter. 

Two or three books for reference, fragments of torn up 
manuscript, drawers open, pens and inkstand, lines half visible 
on the blotting-paper, a bit of sealing-wax twisted and bitten 
and broken into sundry pieces — such relics as these were about 
the table, and Pen flung himself down in George’s empty chair 
— noting things according to his wont, or in spite of himself. 
There was a gap in the book-case (next to the old College 
Plato, with the Boniface Arms), where Helen’s Bible used to be. 
He has taken that with him, thought Pen. He knew why his 
friend was gone. Dear, dear old George ! 

Pen rubbed his hand over his eyes. Oh, how much wiser, 
how much better, how much nobler he is than I, he thought. 
Where was such a friend, or such a brave heart ! Where shall 
I ever hear such a frank voice, and kind laughter ? Where 
shall I ever see such a true gentleman ? No wonder she loved 
him. God bless him ! What was I compared to him ? What 
could she do else but love him ? To the end of our days we 
will be her brothers, as fate wills that we can be no more. 
We’ll be her knights, and wait on her ; and when we’re old, 
we’ll say how we loved her. Dear, dear old George ! 

When Pen descended to his own chambers, his eye fell on 
the letter-box of his outer door, which he had previously over- 
looked, and there was a little note to A. P., Esq., in George’s 
well-known handwriting, George had put into Pen’s box prob- 
ably as he was going away. 


“ Dr. Pen , — T shall be half way home when you breakfast, and intend to stay over 
Christmas, in Suff’k, or elsewhere. 

“ I have my own opinion of the issue of matters about which we talked in J St, 

yesterday ; and think my presence de trop. 

* “Vale. G. W.” 

“ Give my very best regards and adieux to your cousin.” 


And so George was gone, and Mrs. Flanagan, the laundress, 
ruled over his empty chambers. 


73 2 


PENDENNIS . 


Pen of course had to go and see his uncle on the day after 
their colloquy ; and not being admitted, he naturally went to 
Lady Rockminster’s apartments, where the old lady instantly 
asked for Bluebeard, and insisted that he should come to 
dinner. 

“ Bluebeard is gone,” Pen said, and he took out poor 
George’s scrap of paper, and handed it to Laura, who looked at 
it — did not look at Pen in return, but passed the paper back to 
him, and walked away. Pen rushed into an eloquent eulogium 
upon his dear old George to Lady Rockminster, who was aston- 
ished at his enthusiasm. She had never heard him so warm 
in praise of anybody ; and told him, with her usual frankness, 
that she didn’t think it had been in his nature to care so much 
about any other person. 

As Mr. Pendennis was passing through Waterloo Place, in 
one of his many walks to the hotel where Laura lived, and 
whither duty to his uncle carried Arthur every day, he saw 
issuing from Messrs. Gimcrack’s celebrated shop an old friend, 
who was followed to his brougham by an obsequious shopman 
bearing parcels. The gentleman was in the deepest mourning : 
the brougham, the driver, and the horse, were in mourning. 
Grief in easy circumstances, and supported by the comfortablest 
springs and cushions, was typified in the equipage and the little 
gentleman, its proprietor. 

“ What, Foker ! Hail, Foker ! ” cried out Pen — the reader, 
no doubt, has likewise recognized Arthur’s old schoolfellow — 
and he held out his hand to the heir of the late lamented John 
Henry Foker, Esq., the master of Logwood and other houses, 
the principal partner in the great brewery of Foker & Co. : the 
greater portion of Foker’s Entire. 

A little hand, covered with a glove of the deepest ebony, and 
set off by three inches of a snowy wristband, was put forth to 
meet Arthur’s salutation. The other little hand held a little 
morocco case, containing, no doubt, something precious, of 
which Mr. Foker had just become proprietor in Messrs. Gim- 
crack’s shop. Pen’s keen eyes and satiric turn showed him at 
once upon what errand Mr. Foker had been employed ; and 
he thought of the heir in Horace pouring forth the gathered 
wine of his father’s vats ; and that human nature is pretty much 
the same in Regent Street as in the Via Sacra. 

“ Le Roi est mort. Vive le Roi ! ” said Arthur. 

u Ah ! ” said the other. “ Yes. Thank you — very much 
obliged. How do you do, Pen ? — very busy — good-by ! ” and 
he jumped into the black brougham, and sat like a little black 


PENDENNIS 


733 


Care behind the black coachman. He had blushed on seeing 
Pen, and shown other signs of guilt and perturbation, which 
Pen attributed to the novelty of his situation ; and on which he 
began to speculate in his usual sardonic manner. 

“Yes: so wags the world,” thought Pen. “ The stone closes 
over Harry the Fourth, and Harry the Fifth reigns in his stead. 
The old ministers at the brewery come and kneel before him 
with their books ; the draymen, his subjects, fling up their red 
caps, and shout for him. What a grave deference and sym- 
pathy the bankers and the lawyers show ! There was too great 
a stake at issue between those two that they should ever love 
each other very cordially. As long as one man keeps another 
out of twenty thousand a year, the younger must be always 
hankering after the crown, and the wish must be the father to 
the thought of possession. Thank Heaven, there was no 
thought of money between me and our dear mother, Laura.” 

“There never could have been. You would have spurned 
it ! ” cried Laura. “ Why make yourself more selfish than you 
are, Pen ; and allow your mind to own, for an instant, that it 
would have entertained such — such dreadful meanness ? You 
make me blush for you, Arthur : you make me — ” her eyes 
finished this sentence, and she passed her handkerchief across 
them. 

“ There are some truths which women will never acknowl- 
edge,” Pen said, “ and from which your modesty always turns 
away. I do not say that I never knew the feeling, only that I 
am glad I had not the temptation. Is there any harm in that 
confession of weakness ? ” 

“ We are all taught to ask to be delivered from evil, Arthur,” 
said Laura, in a low voice. “ I am glad if you were spared 
from that great crime ; and only sorry to think that you could 
by any possibility have been led into it. But you never could ; 
and you don’t think you could. Your acts are generous and 
kind ; you disdain mean actions. You take Blanche without 
money, and without a bribe. Yes, thanks be to Heaven, dear 
brother. You could not have sold yourself away; I knew you 
could not when it came to the day, and you did not. Praise be 
—be where praise is due. Why does this horrid skepticism 
pursue you, my Arthur ? Why doubt and sneer at your own 
heart — at every one’s ? Oh, if you knew the pain you give me 
—how I lie awake and think of those hard sentences, dear 
brother, and wish them unspoken, unthought ! ” 

“ Do I cause you many thoughts and many tears, Laura ? ” 
asked Arthur. The fulness of innocent love beamed from her 


PENDENNIS . 


734 

in reply. A smile heavenly pure, a glance of unutterable ten- 
derness, sympathy, pity, shone in her face — all which indica- 
tions of love and purity Arthur beheld and worshipped in her, 
as you would watch them in a child, as one fancies one might 
regard them in an angel. 

“ I — I don’t know what I have done,” he said, simply, “ to 
have merited such regard from two such women. It is like 
undeserved praise, Laura — or too much good-fortune, which 
frightens one — or a great post, when a man feels that he is not 
fit for it. Ah, sister, how weak and wicked we are ; how spot- 
less, and full of love and truth, Heaven made you ! I think 
for some of you there has been no fall,” he said, looking at the 
charming girl with an almost paternal glance of admiration. 

“ You can’t help having sweet thoughts, and doing good actions. 
Dear creature ! they are the flowers which you bear.” 

“ And what else, sir ? ” asked Laura. “ I see a sneer 
coming over your face. What is it ? Why does it come, to 
drive all the good thoughts away ? ” 

“A sneer, is there? I was thinking my dear, that nature 
in making you so good and loving did very well : but — ” 

“ But what ? What is that wicked but ? and why are you 
always calling it up ? ” 

“ But will come in spite of us. But is reflection. But is 
the skeptic’s familiar, with whom he has made a compact ; and 
if he forgets it, and indulges in happy day-dreams, or building 
of air-castles, or listens to sweet music let us say, or to the 
bells ringing to church. But taps at the door, and says, 
Master, I am here. You are my master; but I am yours. Go 
where you will you can’t travel without me. I will whisper to 
you when you are on your knees at church. I will be at your 
marriage pillow. I will sit down at your table with your chil- 
dren. I will be behind your death-bed curtain. That is wliat 
But is,” Pen said. 

“ Pen, you frighten me,” cried Laura. 

“ Do you know what But came and said to me just now, 
when I was looking at you ? But said, If that girl had reason ( 
as well as love, she would love you no more. If she knew you 
as you are — the sullied, selfish being which you know — she must 
part from you, and could give you no love and no sympathy. 
Didn’t I say,” he added, fondly, “ that some of you seem 
exempt from the fall ? Love you know ; but the knowledge of 
evil is kept from you.” 

“ What is this you young folks are talking about ? ” asked 
Lady Rockminster, who at this moment made her appearance 


PEND EJVNIS. 


73S 

In the room, having performed, in the mystic retirement of her 
own apartments, and under the hands of her attendant, those 
elaborate toilette-rites without which the worthy old lady never 
presented herself to public view. “ Mr. Pendennis, you are 
always coming here.” 

“ It is very pleasant to be here,” Arthur said : “ and we 
were talking, when you came in, about my friend Foker, whom 
I met just now ; and who, as your ladyship knows, has succeeded 
to his father’s kingdom.” 

“ He has a very fine property, he has fifteen thousand a 
year. He is my cousin. He is a very worthy young man. 
He must come and see me,” said Lady Rockminster, with a 
look at Laura. 

“ He has been engaged for many years past to this cousin, 
Lady — ” 

“ Lady Ann is a foolish little chit,” Lady Rockminster said, 
with much dignity: “and I have no patience with her. She 
has outraged every feeling of society. She has broken her 
father’s heart, and thrown' away fifteen thousand a year.” 

“ Thrown away ! What has happened ? ” asked Pen. 

“ It will be the talk of the town in a day or two ; and there 
is no need why I should keep the secret any longer,” said Lady 
Rockminster, who had written and received a dozen letters on 
the subject. “ I had a letter yesterday from my daughter, who 
was staying at Drummington until all the world was obliged to 
go away on account of the frightful catastrophe which happened 
there. When Mr. Foker came home from Nice, and after the 
funeral, Lady Ann went down on her knees to her father, said 
that she never could marry her cousin, that she had contracted 
another attachment, and that she must die rather than fulfil her 
contract. Poor Lord Rosherville, who is dreadfully embar- 
rassed, showed his daughter what the state of his affairs was, 
and that it was necessary that the arrangements should take 
place ; and, in fine, we all supposed that she had listened to 
reason, and intended to comply with the desires of her family. 
But what had happened — last Thursday she went out after 
breakfast with her maid, and was married in the very church in 
Drummington Park to Mr. Hobson, her father’s own chaplain 
and her brother’s tutor; a red-haired widower with two chil- 
dren. Poor dear Rosherville is in a dreadful way : he wishes 
Henry Foker should marry Alice or Barbara ; but Alice is 
marked with the small-pox, and Barbara is ten years older than 
he is. And, of course, now the young man is his own master, 
he will think of choosing for himself. The blow on Lady 


PENDENNIS. 


736 

Agnes is very cruel. She is inconsolable. She has the house 
in Grosvenor Street for her life, and her settlement, which was 
very handsome. Have you not met her? Yes, she dined one 
day at Lady Clavering’s — the first day I saw you, and a very 
disagreeable young man I thought you were. But I have 
formed you. We have formed him, haven’t we, Laura ? Where 
is Bluebeard ? let him come. That horrid Grindley, the dentist, 
will keep me in town another week.” 

To the latter part of her ladyship’s speech Arthur gave no 
ear. He was thinking for whom could Foker be purchasing 
those trinkets which he was carrying away from the jeweler’s ? 
Why did Harry seem anxious to avoid him ? Could he be still 
faithful to the attachment which had agitated him so much, and 
sent him abroad eighteen months back ? Psha ! The brace- 
lets and presents were for some of Harry’s old friends of the 
Opera or the French Theatre. Rumors from Naples and Paris, 
rumors such as are borne to Club smoking-rooms, had an- 
nounced that the young man had found distractions ; or, pre- 
cluded from his virtuous attachment, the poor fellow had flung 
himself back upon his old companions and amusements — not 
the only man or woman whom society forces into evil, or debars 
from good : not the only victim of the world’s selfish and wick- 
ed laws. 

As a good thing when it is to be done cannot be done too 
quickly, Laura was anxious that Pen’s marriage intentions 
should be put into execution as speedily as possible, and pressed 
on his arrangements with rather a feverish anxiety. Why could 
she not wait ? Pen could afford to do so with perfect equa- 
nimity, but Laura would hear of no delay. She wrote to Pen : 
she implored Pen : she used every means to urge expedition. 
It seemed as if she could have no rest until Arthur’s happiness 
was complete. 

She offered herself to dearest Blanche to come and stay at 
Tunbridge with her, when Lady Rockminster should go on her 
intended visit to the reigning house of Rockminster ; and al- 
though the old dowager scolded, and ordered, and commanded, 
Laura was deaf and disobedient ; she must go to Tunbridge, 
she would go to Tunbridge ; she who ordinarily had no will of 
her own, and complied smilingly with anybody’s whim and 
caprices, showed the most selfish and obstinate determination 
in this instance. The dowager lady must nurse herself in her 
rheumatism, she must read herself to sleep, if she would not 
hear her maid, whose voice croaked, and who made sad work of 


PENDENNIS 


737 

the sentimental passages in the novels — Laura must go, and be 
with her new sister. In another week, she proposed, with many 
loves and regards to dear Lady Clavering, to pass some time 
with dearest Blanche. 

Dearest Blanche wrote instantly in reply to dearest Laura’s 
No. i, to say with what extreme delight she would welcome her 
sister : how charming it would be to practise their old duets 
together, to wander o’er the grassy sward, and amidst the 
yellowing woods of Penshurst and Southborough ! Blanche 
counted the hours till she should embrace her dearest friend. 

Laura, No. 2, expressed her delight at dearest Blanche’s 
affectionate reply. She hoped that their friendship would never 
diminish ; that the confidence between them would grow in 
after years ; that they should have no secrets from each other ; 
that the aim of the life of each would be to make one person 
happy. 

Blanche, No. 2, followed in two days. “ How provoking ! 
Their house was very small, their two spare bedrooms were 
occupied by that horrid Mrs. Planter and her daughter, who 
had thought proper to falL ill (she always fell ill in country 
houses), and she could not or would not be moved for some 
days.” 

Laura, No. 3. “ It was indeed very provoking. L. had 

hoped to hear one of dearest B.’s dear songs on Friday : but 
she was the more consoled to wait, because Lady R. was not 
very well, and liked to be nursed by her. Poor Major Penden- 
nis was very unwell, too, in the same hotel — too unwell even to 
see Arthur, who was constant in his calls on his uncle. Ar- 
thur’s heart was full of tenderness and affection. She had 
known Arthur all her life. She would answer ” — yes, even in 
italics she would answer — “ for his kindness, his goodness, and 
his gentleness.” 

Blanche, No. 3. “ What is this most surprising, most ex- 

traordinary letter from A. P. ? What does dearest Laura 
know about it ? What has happened ? What, what mystery is 
enveloped under his /rightful reserve ? ” 

Blanche, No. 3, requires an explanation ; and it cannot be 
better given than in the surprising and mysterious letter of 
Arthur Pendennis. 


47 


PENDENNIS. 


738 


CHAPTER LXXII. 

MR. AND MRS. SAM HUXTER. 

“Dear Blanche,” Arthur wrote, “you are always reading 
and dreaming pretty dramas, and exciting romances in real life, 
are you now prepared to enact a part of one ? And not the 
pleasantest part, dear Blanche, that in which the heroine takes 
possession of her father’s palace and wealth, and introducing 
her husband to the loyal retainers and faithful vassals, greets 
her happy bridegroom with ‘All of this is mine and thine,’ — 
but the other character, that of the luckless lady, who suddenly 
discovers that she is not the Prince’s wife, but Claude Mel- 
notte’s the beggar’s : that of Alnaschar’s wife, who comes in 
just as her husband has kicked over the tray of porcelain which 
was to be the making of his fortune — But stay ; Alnaschar, who 
kicked down the china, was not a married man ; he had cast 
his eye on the Vizier’s daughter, and his hopes of her went to 
the ground with the shattered bowls and teacups. 

“ Will you be the Vizier’s daughter, and refuse and laugh 
to scorn Alnaschar, or will you be the Lady of Lyons, and love 
the penniless Claude Melnotte ? I will act that part if you like. 
I will love you my best in return. I will do my all to make 
your humble life happy : for humble it will be : at least the odds 
are against any other conclusion ; we shall live and die in a 
poor prosy humdrum way. There will be no stars and epaulettes 
for the hero of our story. I shall write one or two more stories, 
which will presently be forgotten. I shall be called to the Bar, 
and try to get on in my profession ; perhaps some day, if I am 
very lucky, and work very hard (which is absurd), I may get a 
colonial appointment, and you may be an Indian Judge’s lady. 
Meanwhile I shall buy back the “Pall Mall Gazette;” the 
publishers are tired of it since the death of poor Shandon, and 
will sell it for a small sum. Warrington will be my right hand, 
and write it up to a respectable sale. I will introduce you to 
Mr. Finucane the sub-editor, and I know who in the end will 
be Mrs. Finucane, — a very nice gentle creature, who has lived 
sweetly through a sad life — and we will jog on, I say, and look 
out for better times, and earn our living decently. You shall 
have the opera-boxes, and superintend the fashionable intel- 
ligence, and break your little heart in the poet’s corner. Shall 


PENDENNIS. 


'739 

we live over the offices ? — there are four very good rooms, a 
kitchen, and a garret for Laura, in Catherine Street in the 
Strand ; or would you like a house in the Waterloo Road ? — it 
would be very pleasant, only there is that halfpenny toll at the 
Bridge. The boys may go to King’s College, mayn’t they? 
Does all this read to you like a joke ? 

“ Ah, dear Blanche, it is no joke, and I am sober and telling 
the truth. Our fine day-dreams are gone. Our carriage has 
whirled out of sight like Cinderella’s : our house in Belgravia 
has been whisked away into the air by a malevolent Genius, 
and I am no more a Member of Parliament, than I am a Bishop 
on his bench in the House of Lords, or a Duke with a Garter 
at his knee. You know pretty well what my property is, and 
your own little fortune : we may have enough with those 
two to live in decent comfort : to take a cab sometimes when 
we go out to see our friends, and not to deny ourselves an 
omnibus when we are tired. But that is all : is that enough 
for you, my little dainty lady ? I doubt sometimes whether you 
can bear the life I offer you — at least, it is fair that you should 
know what it will be. If you say, * Yes, Arthur, I will follow 
your fate whatever it may be, and be a loyal and loving wife to 
aid and cheer you ’ — come to me, dear Blanche, and may God 
help me so that I may do my duty to you. If not, and you 
look to a higher station, I must not bar Blanche’s fortune — I 
will stand in the crowd, and see your ladyship go to Court when 
you are presented, and you shall give me a smile from your 
chariot window. I saw Lady Mirabel going to the drawing- 
room last season : the happy husband at her side glittered with 
stars and cordons. All the flowers in the garden bloomed in 
the coachman’s bosom. Will you have these and the chariot, 
or walk on foot and mend your husband’s stockings ? 

“ I cannot tell you now — afterwards I might, should the 
day come when we may have no secrets from one another — 
what has happened within the last few hours which has changed 
all my prospects in life ; but so it is, that I have learned some- 
thing which forces me to give up the plans which I had formed, 
and many vain and ambitious hopes in which I had been in- 
dulging. I have written and despatched a letter to Sir Francis 
Clavering, saying that I cannot accept his seat in Parliament 
until after my marriage ; in like manner I cannot and will not 
accept any larger fortune with you than that which has always 
belonged to you since your grandfather’s death, and the birth 
of your half-brother. Your good mother is not in the least 
aware — i hope she never may be — of the reasons which force 


PENDENNIS. 


740 

me to this very strange decision. They arise from a painful 
circumstance, which is attributable to none of our faults ; but, 
having once befallen, they are as fatal and irreparable as that 
shock which overset honest Alnaschar’s porcelain, and shattered 
all his hopes beyond the power of mending. I write gayly 
enough, for there is no use in bewailing such a hopeless mis- 
chance. We have not drawn the great prize of the lottery, 
dear Blanche : but I shall be contented enough without it, if 
you can be so ; and I repeat, with all my heart, that I will do 
my best to make you happy. 

“And now, what news shall I give you ? My uncle is very 
unwell, and takes my refusal of the seat in Parliament in sad 
dudgeon: the scheme was his, poor old gentleman, and he 
naturally bemoans its failure. But Warrington, Laura and I 
had a council of war : they know this awful secret, and back me 
in my decision. You must love George as you love what is 
generous and upright and noble ; and as for Laura — she must 
be our Sister, Blanche, our Saint, our good Angel. With two 
such friends at home, what need we care for the world without, 
or who is member for Clavering, or who is asked or not asked 
to the great balls of the season ? ” 

To this frank communication came back the letter from 
Blanche to Laura, and one to Pen himself, which perhaps his 
own letter justified. “You are spoiled by the w r orld,” Blanche 
wrote ; “ you do not love your poor Blanche as she would be 
loved, or you would not offer thus lightly to take her or to 
leave her. No, Arthur, you love me not — a man of the world, 
you have given me your plighted troth, and are ready to redeem 
it ; but that entire affection, that love whole and abiding, where 
— where is that vision of my youth ? I am but a pastime of your 
life, and I would be its all ; — but a fleeting thought, and I 
would be your whole soul. I would have our two hearts one ; 
but ah, my Arthur, how lonely yours is ! how little you give me 
of it ! You speak of our parting with a smile on your lip ; of our 
meeting, and you care not to hasten it ! Is life but a disillusion, 
then, and are the flowers of our garden faded away? I have 
wept — I have prayed — I have passed sleepless hours — I have 
shed bitter, bitter tears over your letter! To you I bring the 
gushing poesy of my being — the yearnings of the soul that longs 
to be loved — that pine for love, love, love, beyond all ! — that 
flings itself at your feet, and cries, Love me, Arthur ! Your 
heart beats no quicker at the kneeling appeal of my love ! — • 
your proud eye is dimmed by no tear of sympathy ! — you accept 
my soul’s treasure as though ’twere dross ! not the pearls from 


PENDENNIS. 


741 

the unfathomable deeps of affection ! not the diamonds from 
the caverns of the heart. You treat me like a slave, and bid me 
bow to my master ! Is this the guerdon of a free maiden — is 
this the price of a life’s passion ? Ah me ! when was it other- 
wise ? when did love meet with aught but disappointment ? 
Could I hope (fond fool ! ) to be the exception to the lot of my 
race ; and lay my fevered brow on a heart that comprehended 
my own ? Foolish girl that I was ! One by one all the flowers 
of my young life have faded away ; and this, the last, the 
sweetest, the dearest, the fondly, the madly loved, the wildly 
cherished — where is it ? But no more of this. Heed not my 
bleeding heart. — Bless you, bless you always, Arthur ! 

“ I will write more when I am more collected. My racking 
brain renders thought almost impossible. I long to see Laura ! 
She will come to us directly we return from the country, will 
she not ? And you, cold one ! B.” 

The words of this letter were perfectly clear, and written 
in Blanche’s neatest hand upon her scented paper ; and yet the 
meaning of the composition not a little puzzled Pen. Did 
Blanche mean to accept or to refuse his polite offer ? Her 
phrases either meant that Pen did not love her, and she declined 
him, or that she took him, and sacrificed herself to him, cold 
as he was. He laughed sardonically over the letter, and over 
the transaction which occasioned it. He laughed to think how 
Fortune had jilted him, and how he deserved his slippery 
fortune. He turned over and over the musky gilt-edged riddle. 
It amused his humor : he enjoyed it as if it had been a funny 
story. 

He was thus seated, twiddling the queer manuscript in his 
hand, joking grimly to himself, when his servant came in with 
a card from a gentleman who wished to speak to him very par- 
ticularly. And if Pen had gone out into the passage, he would 
have seen sucking his stick, rolling his eyes, and showing 
great marks of anxiety, his old acquaintance, Mr. Samuel 
Huxter. 

“ Mr. Huxter on particular business ! Pray, beg Mr. 
Huxter to come in,” said Pen, amused rather : and not the less 
so when poor Sam appeared before him. 

“ Pray take a chair, Mr. Huxter,” said Pen, in his most 
superb manner. “ In what way can I be of service to you ? ” 

“ I had rather not speak before the flunk — before the man, 
Mr. Pendennis : ” on which Mr. Arthur’s attendant quitted the 
room. 


742 


PENDENNIS. 


“ I’m in a fix,” said Mr. Huxter, gloomily. 

“ Indeed.” 

“ She sent me to you,” continued the young surgeon. 

“ What ! Fanny ? Is she well ? I was coming to see her, 
but I have had a great deal of business since my return to 
London.” 

“ I heard of you through my governor and Jack Hobnell,” 
broke in Huxter. “ I wish you joy, Mr. Pendennis, both of the 
borough and the lady, sir. Fanny wishes you joy, too,” he 
added, with something of a blush. 

“ There’s many a slip between the cup and the lip ! Who 
knows what may happen, Mr. Huxter, or who will sit in Parlia- 
ment for Clavering next session ? ” 

“ You can do anything with my governor,” continued Mr. 
Huxter. “ You got him Clavering Park. The old boy was 
very much pleased, sir, at your calling him in. Hobnell wrote 
me so. Do you think you could speak to the governor for me, 
Mr. Pendennis ? ” 

“ And tell him what ? ” 

“ I’ve gone and done it, sir,” said Huxter, with a particular 
look. 

_“You — you don’t mean to say you have — you have done 
any wrong to that dear little creature, sir ? ” said Pen, starting 
up in a great fury. 

“ I hope not,” said Huxter, with a hang-dog look : “ but 
I’ve married her. And I know there will be an awful shindy 
at home. It was agreed that I should be taken into partner- 
ship when I had passed the College, and it was to have been 
Huxter & Son. But I would have it, confound it. It’s all over 
now, and the old boy’s wrote me that he’s coming up to town 
for drugs : he will be here to-morrow, and then it must all come 
out.” 

“And when did this happen?” asked Pen, not over well 
pleased, most likely, that a person who had once attracted 
some portion of his royal good graces should have transferred 
her allegiance, and consoled herself for his loss. 

“ Last Thursday was five weeks — it was two days after Miss 
Amory came to Shepherd’s Inn,” Huxter answered. 

Pen remembered that Blanche had written and mentioned 
her visit. “ I was called in,” Huxter said. “ I was in the inn 
looking after old Cos’s leg ; and about something else too, very 
likely : and I met Strong, who told me there was a woman taken 
ill in chambers, and went up to give her my professional 
services. It was the old lady who attends Miss Amory — her 


PENDENNIS. 


743 

housekeeper, or some such thing. She was taken with strong 
hysterics : I found her kicking and scratching like a good one 
- — in Strong’s chamber, along with him and Colonel Altamont, 
and Miss Amory crying and as pale as a sheet; and Altamont 
fuming about — a regular kick up. They were two houis in 
the chambers ; and the old woman went whooping off in a cab. 
She was much worse than the young one. I called in Gros- 
venor Place next day to see if I could be of any service, but 
they were gone without so much as thanking me : and the day 
after I had business of my own to attend to — a bad business 
too,” said Mr. Huxter, gloomily. “But it’s done, and can’t be 
undone ; and we must make the best of it.” 

She has known the story for a month, thought Pen, with a 
sharp pang of grief, and a gloomy sympathy — this accounts for 
her letter of to-day. She will not implicate her father, or 
divulge his secret ; she wishes to let me off from the marriage 
— and finds a pretext — the generous girl ! 

“ Do you know who Altamont is, sir ? ” asked Huxter, after 
the pause during which Pen had been thinking of his own affairs. 
“ Fanny and I have talked him over, and we can’t help fancying 
that it’s Mrs. Lightfoot’s first husband come to life again, and 
she who has just married a second. Perhaps Lightfoot won’t 
be sorry for it,” sighed Huxter, looking savagely at Arthur, for 
the demon of jealousy was still in possession of his soul ; and 
now, "and more than ever since his marriage, the poor fellow 
fancied that Fanny’s heart belonged to his rival. 

“Let us talk about your affairs,” said Pen. “ Show me how 
I can be of any service to you, Huxter. Let me congratulate 
you on your marriage. I am thankful that Fanny, who is 4 so 
good, so fascinating, so kind a creature, has found an honest 
man, and a gentleman who will make her happy. Show me 
what I can do to help you.” 

“ She thinks you can, sir,” said Huxter, accepting Pen’s 
proffered hand, “ and Pm very much obliged to you, Pm sure ; 
and that you might talk over my father, and break the business 
to him, and my mother, who always has her back up about 
being a clergyman’s daughter. Fanny ain’t of a good family, I 
know, and not up to us in breeding and that — but she’s a 
Huxter now.” 

“ The wife takes the husband’s rank, of course,” said Pen. 

“ And with a little practice in society,” continued Huxter, 
imbibing his stick, “ she’ll be as good as any girl in Clavering. 
You should hear her sing and play on the piano. Did you 
ever ? Old Bows taught her. And she’ll do on the stage, if 


PENDENNIS. 


744 

the governor was to throw me over ; but I’d rather not have 
her there. She can’t help being a coquette, Mr. Pendennis, 
she can’t help it. Dammy, sir ! I’ll be bound to say, that two 
or three of the Bartholomew chaps, that I’ve brought into my 
place, are sitting with her now : even Jack Linton, that I took 
down as my best man, is as bad as the rest, and she will go on 
singing and making eyes at him. It’s what Bows says, if there 
were twenty men in a room, and one not taking notice of her, 
she wouldn’t be satisfied until the twentieth was at her elbow.” 

“ You should have her mother with her,” said Pen, laughing. 

“ She must keep the lodge. She can’t see so much of her 
family as she used. I can’t, you know, sir, go on with that lot. 
Consider my rank in life,” said Huxter, putting a very dirty 
hand up to his chin. 

“ Au fait,” said Mr. Pen, who was infinitely amused, and 
concerning whom mntato nomine (and of course concerning no- 
body else in the world) the fable might have been narrated. 

As the two gentlemen were in the midst of this colloquy, 
another knock came to Pen’s door, and his servant presently 
announced Mr. Bows. The old man followed slowly, his pale 
face blushing, and his hand trembling somewhat as he took 
Pen’s. He coughed, and wiped his face in his checked cotton 
pocket-handkerchief, and sat down with his hands on his 
knees, the sun shining on his bald head. Pen looked at the 
homely figure with no small sympathy and kindness. This 
man, too, has had his griefs, and his wounds, Arthur thought. 
This man, too, has brought his genius and his heart, and laid 
them at a woman’s feet ; where she spurned them. The 
chance of life has gone against him, and the prize is with that 
creature yonder. Fanny’s bridegroom, thus mutely apostro- 
phized, had winked meanwhile with one eye at old Bows, and 
was driving holes in the floor with the cane which he loved. 

“ So we have lost, Mr. Bows, and here is the lucky winner,” 
Pen said, looking hard at the old man. 

“ Here is the lucky winner, sir, as you say.” 

“ I suppose you have come from my place ? ” asked Huxter, 
who, having winked at Bows with one eye, now favored Pen 
with a wink of the other — a wink which seemed to say, “ In- 
fatuated old boy — you understand — over head and ears in love 
with her — poor old fool ! ” 

“ Yes, I have been there ever since you went away. It was 
Mrs. Sam who sent me after you : who said that she thought 
you might be doing something stupid — something like yourself, 
Huxter.” 


PENDENNIS. 


745 

“ There’s as big fools as I am,” growled the young surgeon. 

“A few, p’raps,” said the old man; “not many, let us 
trust. Yes, she sent me after you for fear you should offend 
Mr. Pendennis ; and I dare say because she thought you 
wouldn’t give her message to him, and beg him to go and see 
her ; and she knew /would take her errand. Did he tell you 
that, sir ? ” 

Huxter blushed scarlet, and covered his confusion with an 
imprecation. Pen laughed ! the scene suited his bitter humor 
more and more. 

“ I have no doubt Mr. Huxter was going to tell me,” Arthur 
said, “ and very much flattered I am sure I shall be to pay my 
respects to his wife.” 

“ It’s in Charterhouse Lane, over the baker’s, on the right- 
hand side as you go from St. John’s Street,” continued Bows, 
without any pity. “You know Smithfield, Mr. Pendennis? 
St. John’s Street leads into Smithfield. Doctor Johnson has 
been down the street many a time with ragged shoes, and a 
bundle of penny-a-lining for the ‘Gent’s Magazine.’ You 
literary gents are better off now — eh ? You ride in your cabs, 
and wear yellow kid gloves now.” 

“ I have known so many brave and good men fail, and so 
many quacks and impostors succeed, that you mistake me if 
you think I am puffed up by my own personal good luck, old 
frieqd,” Arthur said, sadly. “ Ido you think the prizes of life 
are carried by the most deserving ? and set up that mean test 
of prosperity for merit? You must feel that you are as good 
as I. I have never questioned it. It is you that are peevish 
against the freaks of fortune, and grudge the good luck that 
befalls others. It’s not the first time you have unjustly accused 
me, Bows.” 

“ Perhaps you are not far wrong, sir,” said the old fellow, 
wiping his bald forehead. “ I am thinking about myself and 
grumbling ; most men do when they get on that subject. 
Here’s the fellow that’s got the prize in the lottery ; here’s the 
fortunate youth.” 

“ I don’t know what you are driving at,” Huxter said, who 
had been much puzzled as the above remarks passed between 
his two companions. 

“ Perhaps not,” said Bows, dryly. “ Mrs. H. sent me here 
to look after you, and to see that you brought that little mes- 
sage to Mr. Pendennis, which you didn’t, you see, and so she 
was right. Women always are ; they have always a reason for 
everything. Why, sir,” he said, turning round to Pen with a 


74 * 


PEND ENNIS. 


sneer, “ she had a reason even for giving me that message. I 
was sitting with her after you left us, very quiet and comfort- 
able ; I was talking away, and she was mending your shirts, 
when your two young friends, Jack Linton and Bob Blades, 
looked in from Bartholomew’s ; and then it was she found out 
that she had this message to send. You needn’t hurry your- 
self, she don’t want you back again ; they’ll stay these two 
hours, I dare say.” 

Huxter arose with great perturbation at this news, and 
plunged his stick into the pocket of his paletot, and seized his 
hat. 

“You’ll come and see us, sir, won’t you ? ” he said to Pen. 
“You’ll talk over the governor, won’t you, sir, if I can get out 
of this place and down to Clavering ? ” 

“You will promise to attend me gratis if ever I fall ill at 
Fairoaks, will you, Huxter ? ” Pen said, good-naturedly. “ I 
will do anything I can for you. I will come and see Mrs. 
Huxter immediately, and we will conspire together about what 
is to be done.” 

“ I thought that would send him out, sir,” Bows said, drop- 
ping into his chair again as soon as the young surgeon had 
quitted the room. “ And it’s all true, sir — every word of it. 
She wants you back again, and sends her husband after you. 
She cajoles everybody, the little devil. She tries it on you, on 
me, on poor Costigan, on the young chaps from Bartholomew’s. 
She’s got a little court of ’em already. And if there’s nobody 
there, she practises on the old German baker in the shop, or 
coaxes the black sweeper at the crossing.” 

“ Is she fond of that fellow ? ” asked Pen. 

“ There is no accounting for likes and dislikes,” Bows 
answered. “ Yes, she is fond of him ; and having taken the 
thing into her head, she would not rest until she married him. 
They had their banns published at St. Clement’s, and nobody 
heard it or knew any just cause or impediment. And one day 
she slips out of the porter’s lodge and has the business done, 
and goes off to Gravesend with Lothario ; and leaves a note 
for me to go and explain all things to her ma. Bless you ! the 
old woman knew it as well as I did, though she pretended 
ignorance. And so she goes, and I’m alone again. I miss 
her, sir, tripping along that court, and coming for her singing 
lesson ; and I’ve no heart to look into the porter’s lodge now, 
which looks very empty without her, the little flirting thing. 
And I go and sit and dangle about her lodgings, like an old 
fool. She makes ’em very trim and nice, though ; gets up all 


PENDENNIS . 


747 


Huxter s shirts and clothes : cooks his little dinner, and sings 
at her business like a little lark. What’s the use of being 
angry ? I lent ’em three pound to go on with : for they haven’t 
got a shilling till the reconciliation, and pa comes down.” 

When Bows had taken his leave, Pen carried his letter from 
Blanche, and the news which he had just received, to his usual 
adviser, Laura. It was wonderful upon how many points Mr. 
Arthur, who generally followed his own opinion, now wanted 
another person’s counsel. He could hardly so much as choose 
a waistcoat without referring to Miss Bell : if he wanted to buy 
a horse, he must have Miss Bell’s opinion ; all which marks of 
deference tended greatly to the amusement of the shrewd old 
lady with whom Miss Bell lived, and whose plans regarding her 
protegee we have indicated. 

Arthur produced Blanche’s letter then to Laura, and asked 
her to interpret it. Laura was very much agitated, and puzzled 
by the contents of the note. 

“ It seems to me,” she said, “ as if Blanche is acting very 
artfully.” 

“And wishes so to place matters that she may take me or 
leave me ? Is it not so ? ” 

“It is, I am afraid, a kind of duplicity which does not augur 
well for your future happiness : and is a bad reply to your own 
• candor and honesty, Arthur. Do you know I think, I think — 
I scarcely like to say what I think,” said Laura, with a deep 
blush ; but of course the blushing young lady yielded to her 
cousin’s persuasions, and expressed what her thoughts were. 
“It looks to me, Arthur, as if there might be — there might be 
somebody else,” said Laura, with a repetition of the blush. 

“ And if there is,” broke in Arthur, “and if I am free once 
again, will the best and dearest of all women ” 

“ You are not free, dear brother,” Laura said calmly. “ You 
belong to another ; of whom I own it grieves me to think ill. 
But I can’t do otherwise. It is very odd that in this letter she 
does not urge you to tell her the reason why you have broken 
arrangements which would have been so advantageous to you ; 
and avoids speaking on the subject. She somehow seems to 
write as if she knows her father’s secret.” 

Pen said, “ Yes, she must know it ; ” and told the story, 
which he had just heard from Huxter, of the interview at Shep- 
herd’s Inn. 

“ It was not so that she described the meeting,” said Laura ; 
and going to her desk, produced from it that letter of Blanche’s 
which mentioned her visit to Shepherd’s Inn. “ Another dis- 


PENDENNJS . 


748 

appointment— only the Chevalier Strong and a friend of his in 
the room.” This was all that Blanche had said. “ But she 
was bound to keep her father’s secret, Pen,” Laura added. 
“And yet, and yet — it is very puzzling.” 

The puzzle was this, that for three weeks after this eventful 
discovery Blanche had been only too eager about her dearest 
Arthur ; was urging, as strongly as so much modesty could urge, 
the completion of the happy arrangements which were to make 
her Arthur’s forever ; and now it seemed as if something had 
interfered to mar these happy arrangements — as if Arthur poor 
was not quite so agreeable to Blanche as Arthur rich and a mem- 
ber of Parliament — as if there was some mystery. At last she 
said — 

“ Tunbridge Wells is not very far off, is it, Arthur ? Hadn’t 
you better go and see her ? ” 

They had been in town a week, and neither had thought of 
that simple plan before. 


CHAPTER LXXIII. 

SHOWS HOW ARTHUR HAD BETTER HAVE TAKEN A RETURN- 
TICKET. 

The train carried Arthur only too quickly to Tunbridge, 
though he had time to review all the circumstances of his life 
as he made the brief journey ; and to acknowledge to what sad 
conclusions his selfishness and waywardness had led him. 
“ Here is the end of hopes and aspirations,” thought he, “of 
romance and ambitions ! Where I yield or where I am obsti- 
nate, I am alike unfortunate ; my mother implores me, and I 
refuse an angel! Say I had taken her; forced on me as she 
was, Laura would never have been an angel to me. I could not 
have given her my heart at another’s instigation ; I could never 
have known her as she is, had I been obliged to ask another to 
interpret her qualities and point out her virtues. I yield to my 
uncle’s solicitations, and accept on his guarantee Blanche, and 
a seat in Parliament, and wealth, and ambition and a career ; 
and see ! — fortune comes and leaves me the wife without the 
dowry, which I had taken in compensation of a heart. Why 
was I not more honest, or am I not less so ? It would have 
cost my poor old uncle no pangs to accent Blanche’s fortune 


PENDENNIS. 


749 

whencesover it came ; he can’t even understand, he is bitterly 
indignant, heart-stricken almost, at the scruples which actuate 
me in refusing it. I dissatisfy everybody. A maimed, weak, 
imperfect wretch, it seems as if I am unequal to any fortune. I 
neither make myself nor any one connected with 'me happy. 
What prospect is there for this poor little frivolous girl, who 
is to take my obscure name and share my fortune ? I have not 
even ambition to excite me, or self-esteem enough to console 
myself, much more her, for my failure. If I were to write a 
book that should go through twenty editions, why, I should be 
the very first to sneer at my reputation. Say I could succeed 
at the Bar, and achieve a fortune by bullying witnesses and 
twisting evidence ; is that a fame which would satisfy my long- 
ings, or a calling in which my life would be well spent ? How 
I wish I could be that priest opposite, who never has lifted his 
eyes from his breviary, except when we were in Reigate tunnel, 
when he could not see ; or that old gentleman next him, who 
scowls at him with eyes of hatred over his newspaper. The 
priest shuts his eyes to the world, but has his thoughts on the 
book, which is his directory to the world to come. His neigh- 
bor hates him as a monster, tyrant, persecutor, and fancies 
burning martyrs, and that pale countenance looking on, and 
lighted up by the flame. These have no doubts ; these march 
on trustfully, bearing their load of logic.” 0 

“ Would you like to look at the paper, sir ? ” here interposed 
the stout gentleman (it had a flaming article against the order 
of the black-coated gentleman who was travelling with them in 
the carriage), and Pen thanked him and took it, and pursued 
his reverie, without reading two sentences of the journal. 

“ And yet, would you take either of those men’s creeds, with 
its consequences ? ” he thought. “ Ah me ! you must bear your 
own burden, fashion your own faith, think your own thoughts, 
and pray your own prayer. To what mortal ear could I tell all, 
if I had a mind ? or who could understand all ? Who can tell 
another’s short-comings, lost opportunities, weigh the passions 
which overpower, the defects which incapacitate reason ? — what 
extent of truth and right his neighbor’s mind is organized to 
perceive and to do ? — what invisible and forgotten accident, ter- 
ror of youth, chance or mischance of fortune, may have altered 
the current of life ? A grain of sand may alter it, as the fling- 
ing of a pebble may end it. Who can weigh circumstances, 
passions, temptations, that go to our good and evil account, 
save One, before whose awful wisdom we kneel, and at whose 
mercy we ask absolution ? Here it ends,” thought Pen ; “ this 


PENDENNIS. 


75 ° 

day or to-morrow will wind up the account of my youth ; a 
weary retrospect, alas ! a sad history, with many a page I would 
fain not look back on ! But who has not been tired or fallen, 
and who has escaped .without scars from that struggle ? ” And 
his head fell on his breast, and the young man’s heart pros- 
trated itself humbly and sadly before that Throne where sits 
wisdom, and love, and pity for all, and made its confession. 
“ What matters about fame or poverty ? ” he thought. “ If I 
marry this woman I have chosen, may I have strength and will 
to be true to her, and to make her happy ! If I have children, 
pray God teach me to speak and to do the truth among them, 
and to leave them an honest name. There are no splendors 
for my marriage. Does my life deserve any ? I begin a new 
phase of it ; a better than the last may it be, I pray Heaven ! ” 

The train stopped at Tunbridge as Pen was making these 
reflections ; and he handed over the newspaper to his neigh- 
bor, of whom he took leave, while the foreign clergyman in the 
opposite corner still sat with his eyes on his book. Pen jumped 
out of the carriage then, his carpet-bag in hand, and briskly 
determined to face his fortune. 

A fly carried him rapidly to Lady Clavering’s house from 
the station ; and, as he was transported thither, Arthur com- 
posed a little speech, which he intended to address to Blanche, 
and which was really as virtuous, honest, and well-minded an 
oration as any man of his turn of mind, and under his circum- 
stances, could have uttered. The purport of it was — “ Blanche, 
I cannot understand from your last letter what your meaning 
is, or whether my fair and frank proposal to you is acceptable 
or no. I think you know the reason which induces me to fore- 
go the worldly advantages which a union with you offered, and 
which I could not accept without, as I fancy, being dishonored. 
If you doubt of my affection, here I am ready to prove it. Let 
Smirke be called in, and let us be married out of hand ; and 
with all my heart I purpose to keep my vow, and to cherish 
you through life, and to be a true and loving husband to you.” 

From the fly Arthur sprang out then to the hall-door, where 
he was met by a domestic whom he did not know. The man 
seemed to be surprised at the approach of the gentleman with 
the carpet-bag, which he made no attempt to take from Arthur’s 
hands. “ Pier ladyship’s not at home, sir,” the man remarked. 

“ I am Mr. Pendennis Arthur said. “ Where is Light- 
foot ? ” 

“ Lightfoot is gone,” answered the man. “ My Lady is out, 
and my orders was ” 


PENDENNIS. 


75 * 

“ I hear Miss Amory’s voice in the drawing-room,” said 
Arthur. “Take the bag to a dressing-room, if you please;” 
and, passing by the porter, he walked straight towards that 
apartment, from which as the door opened, a warble of melo- 
dious notes issued. 

Our little Siren was at her piano, singing with all her might 
and fascinations. Master Clavering was asleep on the sofa, 
indifferent to the music ; but near Blanche sat a gentleman who 
was perfectly enraptured with her strain, which was of a pas- 
sionate and melancholy nature. 

As the door opened, the gentleman started up with a Hullo ! 
the music stopped, with a little shriek from the singer; Frank 
Clavering woke up from the sofa, and Arthur came forward and 
said, “ What, Foker ! how do you do, Foker? ” He looked at 
the piano, and there, by Miss Amory’s side, was just such an- 
other purple-leather box as he had seen in Harry’s hand three 
days before, when the heir of Logwood was coming out of a 
jeweller’s shop in Waterloo Place. It was opened, and curled 
round the white satin cushion within was, oh, such a magnifi- 
cent serpentine bracelet, with such a blazing ruby head and 
diamond tail ! 

“ How de-do, Pendennis ? ” said Foker. Blanche made many 
motions of the shoulders, and gave signs of interest and agita- 
tion. And she put her handkerchief over the bracelet, and 
then she advanced, with a hand which trembled very much, to 
greet Pen. 

“ How is dearest Laura ? ” she said. The face of Foker 
looking up from his profound mourning — that face, so piteous 
and puzzled, was one which the reader’s imagination must 
depict for himself ; also that of Master Frank Clavering, who, 
looking at the three interesting individuals with an expression 
of the utmost knowingness, had only time to ejaculate the 
words, “ Here’s a jolly go ! ” and to disappear sniggering. 

Pen, too, had restrained himself up to that minute; but 
looking still at Foker, whose ears and cheeks tingled with 
blushes, Arthur burst out into a fit of laughter, so wild and 
loud, that it frightened Blanche much more than any the most 
serious exhibition. 

“ And this was the secret, was it ? Don’t blush and turn 
away, Foker, my boy. Why, man, you are a pattern of fidelity. 
Could I stand between Blanche and such constancy — could I 
stand between Miss Amory and fifteen thousand a year ? ” 

“It is not that, Mr. Pendennis,” Blanche said, with great 
dignity. “ It is not money, it is not rank, it is not gold that 


PENDENNIS 


75 2 

moves me ; but it is constancy, it is fidelity, it is a whole trust* 
ful loving heart offered to me, that I treasure — yes, that I 
treasure ! ” And she made for her handkerchief, but, reflecting 
what was underneath it, she paused. “ I do not disown, I do 
not disguise — my life is above disguise — to him on whom it is 
bestowed, my heart must be for ever bare — that I once thought 
I loved you, — yes, thought I was beloved by you ! — I own. 
How I clung to that faith ! How I strove, I prayed, I longed 
to believe it ! But your conduct always — your own words so 
cold, so heartless, so unkind, have undeceived me. You trifled 
with the heart of the poor maiden. You flung me back with 
scorn the troth which I had plighted ! I have explained all — • 
all to Mr. Foker.” 

“That you have,” said Foker, with devotion, and conviction 
in his looks. 

“ What ! all ? ” said Pen, with a meaning look at Blanche. 
“ It is I am in fault, is it ? Well, well, Blanche, be it so. I 
won’t appeal against your sentence, and bear it in silence. I 
came down here looking to very different things, Heaven knows, 
and with a heart most truly and kindly disposed towards you. 
I hope you may be happy with another, as, on my word, it was 
my wish to make you so ; and I hope my honest old friend 
here will have a wife worthy of his loyalty, his constancy, and 
affection. Indeed they deserve the regard of any woman — 
even Miss Blanche Amory. Shake hands, Harry ; don’t look 
askance at me. Has anybody told you that I was a false and 
heartless character ? ” 

“ I think you’re a ” Foker was beginning, in his wrath, 

when Blanche interposed. ^ 

“ Henry, not a word ! — I pray you let there be forgive- 
ness ! ” 

“ You’re an angel, by Jove, you’re an angel !” said Foker, 
at which Blanche looked seraphically up to the chandelier. 

“ In spite of what has passed, for the sake of what has 
passed, I must always regard Arthur as a brother,” the seraph 
continued ; “ we have known each other years, we have trodden 
the same fields, and plucked the same flowers together. Arthur ! 
Henry ! I beseech you to take hands and to be friends ! For- 
give you ! — /forgive you, Arthur, with my heart I do. Should 
I not do so for making me so happy ? ” 

“ There is only one person of us three whom I pity, Blanche,” 
Arthur said, gravely ; “ and I say to you again, that I hope you 
make this good fellow, this honest and loyal creature, happy.” 

“ Happy ! O Heavens ! ” said Harry. He could not speak. 


PENDENNIS . 


753 


His happiness gushed out at his eyes. “ She don’t know — she 
can’t know how fond I am of her, and — and who am I ? a poor 
little beggar, and she takes me up and says she’ll try and 1 — 1 
— love me. I ain’t worthy of so much happiness. Give us 
your hand, old boy, since she forgives you after your heartless 
conduct, and says she loves you. I’ll make welcome. I tell 
you I’ll love everybody who loves her. By — if she tells me to 
kiss the ground I’ll kiss it. Tell me to kiss the ground ! I 
say, tell me. I love you so. You see 1 love you so.” 

Blanche looked up seraphically again. Her gentle bosom 
heaved. She held out one hand as if to bless Harry, and then 
royally permitted him to kiss it. She took up the pocket- 
handkerchief and hid her own eyes, as the other fair hand was 
abandoned to poor Harry’s tearful embrace. 

“ I swear that is a villain who deceives such a loving crea- 
ture as that,” said Pen. 

Blanche laid down the handkerchief, and put hand No. 
2 softly on Foker’s head, which was bent down kissing and 
weeping over hand No. i. “ Foolish boy,” she said, “it shall 
be loved as it deserves : who could help loving such a silly 
creature ? ” 

And at this moment Frank Clavering broke in upon the 
sentimental trio. 

“ I say, Pendennis,” he said. 

“ Well, Frank ! ” 

“ The man wants to be paid, and go back. He’s had some 
beer.” 

“ I’ll go back with him,” cried Pen. “Good-by, Blanche. 
God bless you, Foker, old friend. You know neither of you 
want me here.” He longed to be off that instant. 

“ Stay — I must say one word to you. One word in private, 
if you please,” Blanche said. “ You can trust us together, 
can’t you, — Henry ? ” The tone in which the word Henry was 
spoken, and the appeal, ravished Foker with delight. “Trust 
you ! ” said he. “ Oh, who wouldn’t trust you ! Come along, 
Franky, my boy.” 

“ Let’s have a cigar,” said Frank, as they went into the hall. 

“ She don’t like it,” said Foker, gently. 

“ Law bless you — she don’t mind* Pendennis used to smoke 
regular,” said the candid youth. 

“ It was but a short word I had to say,” said Blanche to 
Pen, with great calm, when they were alone. “ You never 
loved me, Mr. Pendennis.” 

43 


754 


PEND ENNIS. 


“ I told you how much,” said Arthur. “ I never deceived you.” 

“ I suppose you will go back and marry Laura,” continued 
Blanche. 

“ Was that what you had to say ? ” said Pen. 

“ You are going to her this very night, I am sure of it. 
There is no denying it. You never cared for me.” 

“ Et vous ? ” 

“ Et moi, c'est different. I have been spoilt early. I cannot 
live out of the world, out of excitement. I could have done so, 
but it is too late. If I cannot have emotions, I must have the 
world. You would offer me neither one nor the other. You 
are blase in everything, even in ambition. You had a career 
before you, and you would not take it. You give it up! — for 
what ? — for a betise , for an absurd scruple. Why would you not 
have that seat, and be such a puritain ? Why should you re- 
fuse what is mine by right — by right, entendez-vous ? ” 

“ You know all then ? ” said Pen. 

“ Only within a month. But I have suspected ever since 
Baymouth — n'importe since when. It is not too late. He is as 
if he had never been ; and there is a position in the world be- 
fore you yet. Why not sit in Parliament, exert your talent, and 
give a place in the world to yourself, to your wife ? I take 
celui-la. II est bon. II est riche. 11 est — vous le connaissez au- 
ta?it que moi , enfin. Think you that I would not prefer nn 
hom?ne qui fera parler de moi ? If the secret appears, I am rich 
a millions. How does it affect me ? It is not my fault. It 
will never appear.” 

“ You will tell Harry everything, won’t you ? ” 

“ Je comprends. Vous refusez ,” said Blanche, savagely. “ I 
will tell Harry at my own time, when we are married. You will 
not betray me, will you ? You, having a defenceless girl’s 
secret, will not turn upon her and use it ? S’il me plait de le 
cacher , moil secret ; pourquoi le donnerai-je ? ye laime , mon pau~ 
vre pbre , voyez-vous ? I would rather live with that man than 
with you fades intriguers of the world. I must have emotions 
— il irien donne. II in' ecr it. II ecrit tres-bien , voyez-vous — comme 
un pirate — comme un Bohemien — comme tin homme. But for this 
I would have said to my mother — Ma mere ! quittons ce lache 
mari, cette lache societe — retournons a mon per el 

“ The pirate would have wearied you like the rest,” said Pen. 

“ Eh! 11 me faut des emotions ,” said Blanche. Pen had 
never seen her or known so much about her in all the years of 
their intimacy as he saw and knew now . though he saw more 
than existed in reality. For this young lady was not able to 


PENDENNIS ; 


755 

carry out any emotion to the full ; but had a sham enthusiasm, 
a sham hatred, a sham love, a sham taste, a sham grief, each of 
which flared and shone very vehemently for an instant, but sub- 
sided and gave place to the next sham emotion. 


CHAPTER LXXIV. 

A CHAPTER OF HATCH-MAKING. 

Upon the platform at Tunbridge, Pen fumed and fretted 
until the arrival of the evening train to London, a full half hour, 
— six hours it seemed to him ; but even this immense interval 
was passed, the train arrived, the train sped on, the London 
lights came in view — a gentleman who forgot his carpet-bag in 
the train rushed at a cab, and said to the man, “ Drive as hard 
as you can to Jermyn Street.” The cabman, although a Han- 
som cabman, said “ Thank you ” for the gratuity which was put 
into his hand, and Pen ran up the stairs of the hotel to Lady 
Rockminster’s apartments. Laura was alone in the drawing- 
room, reading, with a pale face, by the lamp. The pale face 
looked up when Pen opened the door. May we follow him ? 
The great moments of life are but moments like the others. 
Your doom is spoken in a word or two. A single look from 
the eyes ; a mere pressure of the hand, may decide it ; or of 
the lips, though they cannot speak. 

When Lady Rockminster, who has had her after-dinner nap, 
gets up and goes into her sitting-room, we may enter with her 
ladyship. 

“Upon my word, young people !” are the first words she 
says, and her attendant makes wondering eyes over her shoul- 
der. And well may she say so ; and well may the attendant 
cast wondering eyes ; for the young people are in an attitude ; 
and Pen in such a position as every young lady who reads this 
has heard tell of, or has seen, or hopes, or at any rate deserves 
to see. 

In a word, directly he entered the room, Pen went up to 
Laura of the pale face, who had not time even to say, What, 
back so soon? and seizing her outstretched and trembling hand 
just as she was raising from her chair, fell down on his knees 


PENDENNIS. 


75 6 

before her, and said quickly, “ I have seen her. She has ei> 
gaged herself to Harry Foker — and — and now, Laura? ” 

The hand gives a pressure — the eyes beam a reply — the 
quivering lips answer, though speechless. Pen’s head sinks 
down into the girl’s lap, as he sobs out, “ Come and bless us, 
dear mother ! ” and arms as tender as Helen’s once more enfold 
him. 

In this juncture it is that Lady Rockminster comes in and 
says, “Upon my word, young people ! Beck ! leave the room. 
What do you want poking your nose in here ? ” 

Pen starts up with looks of triumph, still holding Laura’s 
hand. “ She is consoling me for my misfortune, ma’am,” he 
says. 

“ What do you mean by kissing her hand ? I don’t know 
what you will be next doing.” 

Pen kissed her ladyship’s. “ I have been to Tunbridge,” 
he says, “ and seen Miss Amory ; and find on my arrival that — * 
that a villain has transplanted me in her affections,” he says 
with a tragedy air. 

“ Is that all ? Is that what you were whimpering on your 
knees about ? ” says the old lady, growing angry. “ You might 
have kept the news till to-morrow.” 

“ Yes — another has superseded me,” goes on Pen ; “ but 
why call him villain ? He is brave, he is constant, he is young, 
he is wealthy, he is beautiful.” 

“What stuff you are talking, sir?” cried the old lady. 
“ What has happened ? ” 

“ Miss Amory has jilted me, and accepted Henry Foker, 
Esq. I found her warbling ditties to him as he lay at her feet ; 
presents had been accepted, vows exchanged, these ten days. 
Harry was old Mrs. Planter’s rheumatism, which kept dearest 
Laura out of the house. He is the most constant and generous 
of men. He has promised the living of Logwood to Lady 
Ann’s husband, and given her a splendid present on her mar- 
riage ; and he rushed to fling himself at Blanche’s feet the in- 
stant he found he was free.” 

“ And so, as you can’t get Blanche, you put up with Laura : 
is that it, sir?” asked the old lady. 

“ He acted nobly,” Laura said. 

“ I acted as she bade me,” said Pen. “ Never mind how, 
Lady Rockminster ; but to the best of my knowledge and power. 
And if you mean that I am not worthy of Laura, I know it, and 
pray Heaven to better me ; and if the love and company of the 


PENDENNIS . 


757 

best and purest creature in the world can do so, at least I shall 
have these to help me.” 

“ Hm, hm,” replied the old lady to this, looking with rathet 
an appeased air at the young people. “ It is all very well ; but 
I should have preferred Bluebeard.” 

And now Pen, to divert the conversation from a theme which 
was growing painful to some parties present, bethought him of 
his interview with Huxter in the morning, and of Fanny Bolton’s 
affairs, which he had forgotten under the immediate pressure 
and excitement of his own. And he told the ladies how Huxter 
had elevated Fanny to the rank of wife, and what terrors he was 
in respecting the arrival of his father. He described the scene 
with considerable humor, taking care to dwell especially upon 
that part of it which concerned Fanny’s coquetry and irrepres- 
sible desire of captivating mankind; his meaning being, “You 
see, Laura, I was not so guilty in that little affair ; it was the 
girl who made love to me, and I who resisted. As I am no 
longer present, the little Siren practises her arts and fascina- 
tions upon others. Let that transaction be forgotten in your 
mind, if you please ; or visit me with a very gentle punishment 
for my error.” 

Laura understood his meaning under the eagerness of his 
explanations. “ If you did any wrong, you repented, dear Pen,” 
she said, “ and you know,” she added, with meaning eyes and 
blushes, “that /have no right to reproach you.” 

“ Hm ! ” grumbled the old lady ; “ I should have preferred 
Bluebeard.” 

“ The past is broken away. The morrow is before us. I 
will do my best to make your morrow happy, dear Laura,” Pen 
said. His heart was humbled by the prospect of his happiness : 
it stood awestricken in the contemplation of her sweet goodness 
and purity. He liked his wife better that she had owned to 
that passing feeling for Warrington, and laid bare her generous 
heart to him. And she — very likely she was thinking, “ How 
strange it is that I ever should have cared for another ; I am 
vexed almost to think I care for him so little, am so little sorry 
that he is gone away. Oh, in these past two months how I 
have learned to love Arthur ! I care about nothing but Arthur ; 
my waking and sleeping thoughts are about him ; he is never 
absent from me. And to think that he is to be mine, mine ! 
and that I am to marry him, and not to be his servant as I 
expected to be only this morning ; for I would have gone down 
on my knees to Blanche to beg her to let me live with him. 
And now — Oh, it is too much. Oh, mother ! mother, that you 


PENDENNIS. 


75 s 

were here ! ” Indeed, she felt as if Helen were there — by her 
actually, though invisibly. A halo of happiness beamed from 
her. She moved with a different step, and bloomed with a new 
beauty. Arthur saw the change ; and the old Lady Rockmin- 
ster remarked it with shrewd eyes. 

“ What a sly demure little wretch you have been,” she 
whispered to Laura — while Pen, in great spirits, was laughing, 
and telling his story about Huxter — “and how you have kept 
your secret ? ” 

“ How are we to help the young couple ? ” said Laura. Of 
course Miss Laura felt an interest in all young couples, as 
generous lovers always love other lovers. 

“We must go and see them,” said Pen. 

“ Of course we must go and see them,” said Laura. “ I 
intend to be very fond of Fanny. Let us go this instant. 
Lady Rockminster, may I have this carriage ? ” 

“ Go now ! — why, you stupid creature, it is eleven o’clock at 
night. Mr. and Mrs. Huxter have got their nightcaps on, I 
dare say. And it is time for you to go now. Good-night, Mr. 
Pendennis.” 

Arthur and Laura begged for ten minutes more. 

“ We will go to-morrow morning, then. I will come and 
fetch you with Martha.” 

“An earl’s coronet,” said Pen, who, no doubt, was pleased 
himself, “ will have a great effect in Lamb Court and Smithfield. 
Stay — Lady Rockminster, will you join us in a little con- 
spiracy ? ’ 

“ How do you mean conspiracy, young man ? ” 

“ Will you please to be a little ill to-morrow ; and when old 
Mr. Huxter arrives, will you let me call him in ? If he is put 
into a good-humor at the notion of attending a baronet in the 
country, what influence won’t a countess have on him ? When 
he is softened — when he is quite ripe, we will break the secret 
upon him ; bring in the young people, extort the paternal bene- 
diction, and finish the comedy.” 

“ A parcel of stuff,” said the old lady. “ Take your hat, sir. 
Come away, miss. There — my head is turned another way. 
Good-night, young people.” And who knows but the old lady 
thought of her own early days as she went away on Laura’s 
arm, nodding her head and humming to herself ? 

With the early morning came Laura and Martha, according 
to appointment ; and the desired sensation was, let us hope, 
effected in Lamb Court, whence the three proceeded to wait 
upon Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Huxter, at their residence in Charter* 
house Lane. 


PENDENNIS. 


759 

The two ladies looked at each other with great interest, and 
not a little emotion on Fanny’s part. She had not seen hei 
“ guardian, ” as she was pleased to call Pen in consequence of 
his bequest, since the event had occurred which had united her 
to Mr. Huxter. 

“ Samuel told me how kind you had been,” she said. 
“You were always very kind, Mr. Pendennis. And — and I 
hope your friend is better, who was took ill in Shepherd’s Inn, 
ma’am.” 

“ My name is Laura,” said the other, with a blush. “ I am 
— that is, I was — that is, I am Arthur’s sister : and we shall 
always love you for being so good to him when he was ill. And 
when we live in the country, I hope, we shall see each other. 
And I shall be always happy to hear of your happiness, 
Fanny.” 

“ We are going to do what you and Huxter have done, Fanny. 
— Where is Huxter ? What nice, snug lodgings you’ve got ! 
What a pretty cat ! ” 

While Fanny is answering these questions in reply to Pen, 
Laura says to herself — “Well, now, really ! is this the creature 
about whom we were all so frightened ? What could he see in 
her ? She’s a homely little thing, but such manners ! Well, she 
was very kind to him, — bless her for that.” 

Mr. Samuel had gone out to meet his Pa. Mrs. Huxter 
said that the old gentleman was to arrive that day at the 
Somerset Coffee-House in the Strand ; and Fanny confessed 
that she was in a sad tremor about the meeting. “ If his parents 
cast him off, what are we to do ? ” she said. “ I shall never 
pardon myself for bringing ruing on my ’usband’s ’ead. You 
must intercede for us, Mr. Arthur. If mortal man can, you 
can bend and influence Mr. TJxter senior.” Fanny still regarded 
Pen in the light of a superior being, that was evident. No 
doubt Arthur thought of the past, as he marked the solemn 
little tragedy-airs and looks, the little ways, the little trepida- 
tions, vanities, of the little bride. As soon as the interview was 
over entered Messrs. Linton and Blades, who came, of course, 
to visit Huxter, and brought with them a fine fragrance of 
tobacco. They had watched the carriage at the baker’s door, 
and remarked the coronet with awe. They asked of Fanny 
who was that uncommonly heavy swell who had just driven off? 
and pronounced the Countess to be the right sort. And when 
they heard that it was Mr. Pendennis and his sister, they re- 
marked that Pen’s father was only a sawbones ; and that he 
gave himself confounded airs ; they had been in Huxter’s com- 


PENDENNIS. 


760 

pany on the night of his little altercation with Pen in the Back 
Kitchen. 

Returning homewards through Fleet Street, and as Laura 
was just stating to Pen’s infinite amusement that Fanny was 
very well, but that really there was no beauty in her, — there 
might be, but she could not see it, — as they were locked near 
Temple Bar, they saw young Huxter returning to his bride. 
“ The governor had arrived ; was at the Somerset Coffee-House 
— was in tolerable good-humor — something about the railway : 
but he had been afraid to speak about — -about that business. 
Would Mr. Pendennis try it on ? ” 

Pen said he would go and call at that moment upon Mr. 
Huxter, and see what might be done. Huxter junior would 
lurk outside whilst that awful interview took place. The coronet 
on the carriage inspired his soul also with wonder ; and old 
Mr. Huxter himself beheld it with delight, as he looked from 
the coffee-house window on that Strand which it was always a 
treat to him to survey. 

“And I can afford to give myself a lark, sir,” $gid Mr. 
Huxter, shaking hands with Pen. “ Of course you know the 
news ? We have got our bill, sir. We shall have our branch 
line — our shares are up, sir — and we buy your three fields along 
the Brawl, and put a pretty penny into your pocket, Mr. Pen- 
dennis.” 

“Indeed! — that was good news.” Pen remembered that 
there was a letter from Mr. Tatham, at Chambers, these three 
days ; but he had not opened the communication, being in- 
terested with other affairs. 

“I hope you don’t intend to grow rich, and give up practice,” 
said Pen. “We can’t lose you at Clavering, Mr. Huxter; 
though I hear very good accounts of your son. My friend, Dr. 
Goodenough, speaks most highly of his talents. It is hard 
that a man of your eminence, though, should be kept in a 
country town.” 

“The metropolis would have been my sphere of action, 
sir,” said Mr. Huxter, surveying the Strand. “ But a man takes 
his business where he finds it ; and I succeeded to that of my 
father.” 

“ It was my father’s too,” said Pen. “ I sometimes wish I 
had followed it.” 

“ You, sir, have taken a more lofty career,” said the old 
gentleman. “ You aspire to the senate : and to literary honors. 
You wield the poet’s pen, sir, and move in the circles of fashion. 
We keep an eye upon you at Clavering. We read your name 


PENDENNIS . 


76 1 

in the lists of the select parties of the nobility. Why, it was 
only the other day that my wife was remarking how odd it was 
that at a party at the Earl of Kidderminster’s your name was 
not mentioned. To what member of the aristocracy may I ask 
does that equipage belong from which I saw you descend ? 
The Countess Dowager of Rockminster? How is her lady- 
ship ? ” 

“ Her ladyship is not very well ; and when I heard that you 
were coming to town, I strongly urged her to see you, Mr. 
Huxter,” Pen said. Old Huxterfelt, if he had a hundred votes 
for Clavering, he would give them all to Pen. 

“ There is an old friend of yours in the carriage — a Claver- 
ing lady too — will you come out and speak to her ? ” asked 
Pen. The old surgeon was delighted to speak to a coronetted 
carriage in the midst of the full Strand : he ran out bowing and 
smiling. Huxter junior, dodging about the district, beheld the 
meeting between his father and Laura, saw the latter put out 
her hand, and presently, after a little colloquy with Pen, beheld 
his father actually jump into the carriage, and drive away with 
Miss Bell. 

There was no room for Arthur, who came back, laughing, to 
the young surgeon, and told him whither his parent was bound. 
During the whole of the journey, that artful Laura coaxed, and 
wheedled, and cajoled him so adroitly, that the old gentleman 
would have granted her anything; and Lady Rockminster 
achieved the victory over him by complimenting him on his 
skill, and professing her anxiety to consult him. What w r ere 
her ladyship’s symptoms ? Should he meet her ladyship’s usual 
attendant ? Mr. Jones was called out of town ? He should be 
delighted to devote his very best energies and experience to 
her ladyship’s service. 

He was so charmed with his patient, that he wrote home 
about her to his wife and family ; he talked of nothing but Lady 
Rockminster to Samuel, when that youth came to partake of 
beefsteak and oyster-sauce, and accompany his parent to the 
play. There was a simple grandeur, a polite urbanity, a high- 
bred grace about her ladyship, which he had never witnessed 
in any woman. Her symptoms did not' seem alarming : he had 
prescribed — Spir : Ammon : Aromat : with a little Spir : Menth : 
Pip : and orange-flower, which would be all that was necessary. 

“Miss Bell seemed to be on the most confidential and 
affectionate footing with her ladyship. She was about to form 
a matrimonial connection. All young people ought to marry. 
Such were her ladyship’s words ; and the Countess condescend- 


PENDENNTS. 


762 

ed to ask respecting my own family, and I mentioned you by 
name to her ladyship, Sam, my boy. I shall look in to-morrow, 
when, if the remedies which I have prescribed for her ladyship 
have had the effect which, I anticipate, I shall probably follow 
them up by a little Spir : Lavend : Comp : — and so set my 
noble patient up. What is the theatre which is most frequented 
by the — by the higher classes in town, hey, Sam ? and to what 
amusement will you take an old country doctor to-night, hey, 
sir ? ” 

On the next day, when Mr. Huxter called in Jermyn Street 
at twelve o’clock, Lady Rockminster had not yet left her room, 
but Miss Bell and Mr. Pendennis were in waiting to receive 
him. Lady Rockminster had had a most comfortable night, 
and was getting on as well as possible . How had Mr. Huxter 
amused himself at the theatre with his son ? What a capital 
piece it was, and how charmingly Mrs. O’Leary looked and 
sang at it ! and what a good fellow young Huxter was ! liked 
by everybody, an honor to his profession. He has not his 
father’s manners, I grant you, or that old-world tone which is 
passing away from us, but a more excellent, sterling fellow 
never lived. “ He ought to practice in the country whatever 
you do, sir,” said Arthur — “ he ought to marry — other people 
are going to do so — and settle.” 

“ The very words that her ladyship used yesterday, Mr. 
Pendennis. He ought to marry. Sam should marry, sir.” 

“ The town is full of temptations, sir,” continued Pen. The 
old gentleman thought of that houri, Mrs. O’Leary. 

“ There is no better safeguard for a young man than an 
early marriage with an honest affectionate creature.” 

“ No better, sir, no better.” 

“ And love is better than money, isn’t it? ” 

“ Indeed it is,” said Miss Bell. 

“ I agree with so fair an authority,” said the old gentleman, 
with a bow. 

“ And — and suppose, sir,” Pen said, “ that I had a piece of 
news to communicate to you.” 

“ God bless my soul, Mr. Pendennis ! what do you mean ? ” 
asked the old gentleman. 

“ Suppose that I had to tell you that a young man, carried 
away by an irresistible passion for an admirable and most vir- 
tuous young creature — whom everybody falls in love with — had 
consulted the dictates of reason and his heart, and had married. 
Suppose I were to tell you that that man is my friend ; that 
our excellent, our truly noble friend the Countess Dowager of 


PENDENNIS. 


763 

Rockminster is truly interested about him (and you may fancy 
what a young man can do in life when that family is interested 
for him) ; suppose I were to tell you that you know him — that 
he is here — that he is ” 

“ Sam married ! God bless my soul, sir, you don’t mean 
that ! ” 

“ And to such a nice creature, dear Mr. Huxter.” 

“ Her ladyship is charmed with her,” said Pen, telling 
almost the first fib which he has told in the course of this 
story. 

“ Married ! the rascal, is he ? ” thought the old gentleman. 

“ They will do it, sir,” said Pen ; and went and opened the 
door. 

Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Huxter issued thence, and both came 
and knelt down before the old gentleman. The kneeling little 
Fanny found favor in his sight. There must have been some- 
thing attractive about her, in spite of Laura’s opinion. 

“ Will never do so any more, sir,” said Sam. 

“Get up, sir,” said Mr. Huxter. And they got up, and 
Fanny came a little nearer and a little nearer still, and looked 
so pretty and pitiful, that somehow Mr. Huxter found himself 
kissing the little crying-laughing thing, and feeling as if he 
liked it. 

“ What’s your name, my dear ; ” he said, after a minute of 
this sport. 

“ Fanny, papa,” said Mrs. Samuel. 


CHAPTER LXXV 

EXEUNT OMNES. 

Our characters are all a month older than they were when 
the last-described adventures and conversations occurred, and 
a great number of the personages of our story have chanced to 
re-assemble at the little country town where we were first in- 
troduced to them. Frederick Lightfoot, formely maitre-d' hotel 
in the service of Sir Francis Clavering, of Clavering Park, 
Bart., has begged leave to inform the nobility and gentry of 

shire that he has taken the well-known and comfortable 

hotel, the “ Clavering Arms,” in Clavering, where he hopes for 
the continued patronage of the gentlemen and families of the 


PENDENNIS. 


764 

county. “This ancient and well-established house,” Mr. 
Lightfoot’s manifesto states, “ has been repaired and decora- 
ted in a style of the greatest comfort. Gentlemen hunting with 
the Dumplingbeare hounds will find excellent stabling and 
loose boxes for horses at the “ Clavering Arms.” A commo- 
dious billiard-room has been attached to the hotel, and the 
cellars have been furnished with the choicest wines and spirits, 
selected, without regard to expense, by C. L. Commercial 
gentleman will find the “ Clavering Arms ” a most comfortable 
place of resort : and the scale of charges has been regulated 
for all, so as to meet the economical spirit of the present 
times.” 

Indeed, there is a considerable air of loveliness about the 
old Inn. The Clavering Arms have been splendidly repainted 
over the gateway. The coffee-room windows are bright and 
fresh, and decorated with Christmas holly ; the magistrates 
have met in petty sessions in the card-room of the old Assem- 
bly. The farmers’ ordinary is held as of old, and frequented 
by increased numbers, who are pleased with Mrs. Lightfoot’s 
cuisine. Her Indian curries and mulligatawny soup are espe- 
cially popular: Major Stokes, the respected tenant of Fairoaks 
Cottage, Captain Glanders, H. P., and other resident gentry, 
have pronounced in their favor, and have partaken of them 
more than once, both in private and at the dinner of the Clav- 
ering Institute, attendant on the incorporation of the reading- 
room, and when the chief inhabitants of that flourishing little 
town met together and did justice to the hostess’s excellent 
cheer. The chair was taken by Sir Francis Clavering, Bart., 
supported by the esteemed rector, Dr. Portman ; the vice-chair 
being ably filled by — Barker, Esq. (supported by the Rev. J. 
Simcoe and the Rev. S. Jowls), the enterprizing head of the 
ribbon factory in Clavering, and chief director of the Clavering 
and Chatteris Branch of the Great Western Railway, which 
will be opened in another year, and upon the works of which 
the engineers and workmen are now busily engaged. 

“ An interesting event, which is likely to take place in the 
life of our talented townsman, Arthur Pendennis, Esq., has, we 
understand, caused him to relinquish the intentions which 
he had of offering himself as a candidate for our borough : 
and rumor whispers ” ( says the “ Chatteris Champion, Clav- 
ering Agriculturist, and Baymouth Fisherman,” — that inde- 
pendent county paper, so distinguished for its unswerving prin- 
ciples and loyalty to the British oak, and so eligible a medium 
for advertisements) — “ rumor states,” says the C. C., C. A. and 


PENDENNIS. 


765 

B. F., “ that should Sir Francis Clavering’s failing health oblige 
him to relinquish his seat in Parliament, he will vacate it in 
favor of a young gentleman of colossal fortune and related to 
the highest aristocracy of the empire, who is about to contract 
'a matrimonial alliance with an accomplished and lovely lady, 
connected by the nearest ties with the respected family at Cla- 
vering Park. Lady Clavering and Miss Amory have arrived at 
the Park for the Christmas holidays ; and we understand that 
a large number of the aristocracy are expected, and that festiv- 
ities of a peculiarly interesting nature will take place there at 
the commencement of the new year.” 

The ingenious reader will be enabled, by the help of the 
above announcement, to understand what has taken place 
during the little break which has occurred in our narrative. 
Although Lady Rockminster grumbled a little at Laura’s pref- 
erence for Pendennis over Bluebeard, those who are aware of 
the latter’s secret will understand that the young girl could 
make no other choice, and the kind old lady who had consti- 
tuted herself Miss Bell’s guardian was not ill-pleased that she 
was to fulfil the great purpose in life of young ladies and marry. 
She informed her maid of the interesting event that very 
night, and of course Mrs. Beck, who was perfectly aw’are of 
every single circumstance, and kept by Martha, of Fairoaks, in 
the fullest knowledge of what was passing, was immensely sur- 
prised and delighted. “ Mr. Pendennis’s income is so much ; 
the railroad will give him so much more, he states ; Miss Bell 
has so much, and may probably have a little more one day. 
For persons in their degree, they will be able to manage very 
well. And I shall speak to my nephew Pynsent, who I suspect 
was once rather attached to her, — but of course that was out of 
the question (“ Oh ! of course, my lady ; I should think so 
indeed ! ”) — not that you know anything whatever about it, or 
have any business to think at all on the subject, — I shall speak 
to George Pynsent, who is now chief secretary of the Tape and 
Sealing Wax Office, and have Mr. Pendennis made something. 
And, Beck, in the morning you will carry down my compliments 
to Major Pendennis, and say that I shall pay him a visit at one 
o’clock. Yes,” muttered the old lady, “ the Major must be 
reconciled, and he must leave his fortune to Laura’s children.” 

Accordingly, at one o’clock, the Dowager Lady Rockminster 
appeared at Major Pendennis’s, who w r as delighted, as may be 
imagined, to receive so noble a visitor. The Major had been 
prepared, if not for the news which her ladyship was about to 
give him, at least with the intelligence that Pen’s marriage with 


PENDENNIS. 


766 

Miss Amory was broken off. The young gentleman bethinking 
him of his uncle, for the first time that day it must be owned, 
and meeting his new servant in the hall of the hotel, asked 
after the Major’s health from Mr. Frosch ; and then went into 
the coffee-room of the hotel, where he wrote a half-dozen lines 
to acquaint his guardian with what had occurred. “ Dear 
uncle,” he said, if there has been any question between us, it is 
over now. I went to Tunbridge Wells yesterday, and found 
that somebody else had carried off the prize about which we 
were hesitating. Miss A., without any compunction for me, 
has bestowed herself upon Harry Foker, with his fifteen thou- 
sand a year. I came in suddenly upon their loves, and found 
and left him in possession. 

“ And you’ll be glad to hear, Tatham writes me, that he has 
sold three of my fields at Fairoaks to the Railroad Company, 
at a great figure. I will tell you this, and more when we meet ; 
and am always your affectionate — A. P.” 

“ I think I am aware of what you were about to tell me,” 
the Major said, with a most courtly smile and bow to Pen’s 
ambassadress. “ It was a very great kindness of your ladyship 
to think of bringing me the news. How well you look ! How 
very good you are ! How very kind you have always been to 
that young man ! ” 

“ It was for the sake of his uncle,” said Lady Rockminster, 
most politely. 

“ He has informed me of the state of affairs, and written 
me a nice note, — yes, a nice note,” continued the old gentle- 
man ; and I find he has had an increase to his fortune, — yes ; 
and, all things considered, I don’t much regret that this affair 
with Miss Amory is manquee , though I wished for it once, — in 
fact, all things considered, I am very glad of it.’ 

“ We must console him, Major Pendennis,” continued the 
lady ; “ we must give him a wife.” The truth then came across 
the Major’s mind, and he saw for what purpose Lady Rock- 
minster had chosen to assume the office of ambassadress. 

It is not necessary to enter into the conversation which 
ensued, or to tell at any length how her ladyship concluded a 
negotiation, which, in truth, was tolerably easy. There could 
be no reason why Pen should not marry according to his own 
and his mother’s wish ; and as for Lady Rockminster, she sup- 
ported the marriage by intimations which had very great weight 
with the Major, but of which we shall say nothing, as her lady- 
ship (now, of course, much advanced in years) *is still alive, and 
the family might be angry ; and, in fine, the old gentleman was 


PENDENNIS. 


767 

quite overcome by the determined graciousness of the lady, 
and her fondness for Laura. Nothing, indeed, could be more 
bland and kind than Lady Rockminster’s whole demeanor, 
except for one moment when the Major talked about his boy 
throwing himself away, at which her ladyship broke out into a 
little speech, in which she made the Major understand, what 
poor Pen and his friends acknowledge very humbly, that Laura 
was a thousand times too good for him. Laura was fit to be 
the wife of a king, — Laura was a paragon of virtue and excel- 
lence. And it must be said, that when Major Pendennis found 
that a lady of the rank of the Countess of Rockminster seri- 
ously admired Miss Bell, he instantly began to admire her him- 
self. 

So that when Herr Frosch was requested to walk up stairs 
to Lady Rockminster’s apartments, and inform Miss Bell and 
Mr. Arthur Pendennis that the Major would receive them, 
and Laura appeared blushing and happy as she hung on Pen’s 
arm, the Major gave a shaky hand to one and the other, with 
no unaffected emotion and cordiality, and then went through 
another salutation to Laura, which caused her to blush still 
more. Happy blushes ! bright eyes beaming with the light of 
love ! The story-teller turns from this group to his young au- 
dience, and hopes diat one day their eyes may all shine so. 

Pen having retreated in the most friendly manner, and the 
lovely Blanche having bestowed her young affections upon a 
blushing bridegroom, with fifteen thousand a year, there was such 
an outbreak of happiness in Lady Clavering’s heart and family 
as the good Begum had not known for many a year, and she 
and Blanche were on the most delighted terms of cordiality and 
affection. The ardent Foker pressed onwards the happy day, 
and was as anxious as might be expected to abridge the period 
of mourning which should put him in possession of so many 
charms and amiable qualities, of which he had been only, as it 
were, the heir-apparent, not the actual owner, until then. The 
gentle Blanche, everything that her affianced lord could desire, 
was not averse to gratify the wishes of her fond Henry. Lady 
Clavering came up. from Tunbridge. Milliners and jewellers 
were set to work and engaged to prepare the delightful para- 
phernalia of Hymen. Lady Clavering was in such a good- 
humor, that Sir Francis even benefited by it, and such a recon- 
ciliation was effected between this pair, that Sir Francis came 
to London, sat at the head of his own table once more, and 
appeared tolerably flush of money at his billiard-rooms and 


PEND ENNIS. 


768 

gambling-houses again. One day, when Major Pendennis and 
Arthur went to dine in Grosvenor Place, they found an old 
acquaintance established in the quality of major-domo, and the 
gentleman in black, who, with perfect politeness and gravity, 
offered them their choice of sweet or dry champagne, was no 
other than Mr. James Morgan. The Chevalier Strong was one 
of the party ; he was in high spirits and condition, and enter- 
tained the company with accounts of his amusements abroad. 

“ It was my Lady who invited me,” said Strong to Arthur, 
under his voice — “ that fellow Morgan looked as black as thun- 
der when I came in. He is about no good here. I will go 
away first, and wait for you and Major Pendennis at Hyde 
Park Gate.” 

Mr. Morgan helped Major Pendennis to his great-coat 
when he was quitting the house ; and muttered something 
about having accepted a temporary engagement with the Clav- 
ering family. 

“ I have got a paper of yours, Mr. Morgan,” said the old 
gentleman. 

“ Which you can show, if you please, to Sir Francis, sir, and 
perfectly welcome,” said Mr. Morgan, with downcast eyes. 
“ I’m very much obliged to you, Major Pendennis, and if I can 
pay you for all your kindness I will.” 

Arthur overheard the sentence, and saw the look of hatred 
which accompanied it, suddenly cried out that he had forgotten 
his handkerchief, and ran up stairs to the drawing-room again. 
Foker was still there : still lingering about his siren. Pen gave 
the siren a look full of meaning, and we suppose that the siren 
understood meaning looks, for when, after finding the veracious 
handkerchief of which he came in quest, he once more went 
out, the siren, with a laughing voice, said, “ Oh, Arthur — Mr. 
Pendennis— I want you to tell dear Laura something ! ” and 
she came out to the door. 

“What is it ? ” she asked, shutting the door. 

“ Have you told Harry? Do you know that villain Morgan 
knows all •? ” 

“ I know it,” she said. 

“ Have you told Harry ? ” 

“ No, no,” she said. “ You won’t betray me ? ” 

“ Morgan will,” said Pen. 

“ No, he won’t,” said Blanche. “ I have promised him — 
n'importc. Wait until after our marriage — Oh, until after our 
marriage — Oh, how wretched I am ! ” said the girl, who had 
been all smiles, and grace, and gayety during the evening. 


PENDENNIS. 


769 

Arthur said, “ I beg and implore you to tell Harry. Tell 
him now. It is no fault of yours. He will pardon you any- 
thing. Tell him to-night.” 

“ And give her this — II est la — with my love, please ; and I 
beg your pardon for calling you back ; and if she will be at 
Madame Crinoline’s at half-past three, and if Lady Rockmin- 
ster can spare her, I should so like to drive with her in the 
Park ; ” and she went in, singing and kissing her little hand, as 
Morgan the velvet-footed came up the carpeted stair. 

Pen heard Blanche’s piano breaking out into brilliant music 
as he went down to join his uncle ; and they walked away to- 
gether. Arthur briefly told him what he had done. “ What 
was to be done ? ” he asked. 

“ What is to be done, begad ? ” said the old gentleman. 
“ What is to be done but to leave it alone ? Begad, let us be 
thankful,” said the old fellow, with a shudder, “that we are out 
of the business, and leave it to those it concerns.” 

“ I hope to Heaven she’ll tell him,” said Pen. 

“ Begad, she’ll take her own course,” said the old man. 
“ Miss Amory is a dev’lish wide-awake girl, sir, and must play 
her own cards ; and I’m doosid glad you are out of it — doosid 
glad, begad. Who’s this smoking? Oh, it’s Mr. Strong again. 
He wants to put in his oar, I suppose. I tell you, don’t meddle 
in the business, Arthur.” 

Strong began once or twice, as if to converse upon the sub- 
ject, but the Major would not hear a word. He remarked on 
the moonlight on Apsley House, the weather, the cab-stands — • 
anything but that subject. He bowed stiffly to Strong, and 
clung to his nephew’s arm, as he turned down St. James’s 
Street, and again cautioned Pen to leave the affair alone. “ It 
had like to have cost you so much, sir, that you may take my 
advice,” he said. 

When Arthur came out of the hotel, Strong’s cloak and 
cigar were visible a few doors off. The jolly Chevalier laughed 
as they met. “ I’m an old soldier, too,” he said. “ I wanted 
to talk to you, Pendennis. I have heard of all that has hap- 
pened, and all the chops and changes that have taken place 
during my absence. I congratulate you on your marriage, and 
I congratulate you on your escape, too — you understand me. 
It was not my business to speak, but I know this, that a certain 
party is as arrant a little — well — well, never mind what. You 
acted like a man and a trump, and are well out of it.” 

“ I have no reason to complain,” said Pen. “ I went back 
to beg and entreat poor Blanche to tell Foker all : I hope, for 

49 


770 


PENDENNIS. 


her sake, she will ; but I fear not. There is but one policy, 
Strong, there is but one.” 

“ And lucky he that can stick to it,” said the Chevalier. 
“ That rascal Morgan means mischief. He has been lurking 
about our Chambers for the last two months : he has found 
out that poor mad devil Amory’s secret. He has been trying 
to discover where he was : he has been pumping Mr. Bolton, 
and making old Costigan drunk several times. He bribed the 
Inn porter to tell him when he came back : and he has got into 
Clavering’s service on the strength of his information. He 
will get very good pay for it, mark my words, the villain.” 

“ Where is Amory ? ” asked Pen. 

“ At Boulogne, I believe. I left him there, and warned 
him not to come back. I have broken with him, after a des- 
perate quarrel, such as one might have expected with such a 
madman. And I’m glad to think that he is in my debt now, 
and that I have been the means of keeping him out of more 
harm than one.” 

“ He has lost all his winnings, I suppose ? ” said Pen. 

“ No : he is rather better than when he went away, or was 
a fortnight ago. He had extraordinary luck at Baden : broke 
the bank several nights, and was the fable of the place. He 
lied himself there with a fellow, by the name of Bloundell, who 
gathered about him a society of all sorts of sharpers, male and 
female, Russians, Germans, French, English. Amory got so 
insolent, that I was obliged to thrash him one day within an inch 
of his life. I couldn’t help myself ; the fellow has plenty of 
pluck, and I had nothing for it but to hit out.” 

“ And did he call you out ? ” said Pen. 

“You think if I had shot him I should have done nobody 
any harm? No, sir; I waited for his challenge, but it never 
came : and the next time I met him he begged my pardon, and 
said, ‘ Strong, I beg your pardon ; you whopped me and you 
served me right.’ I shook hands : but I couldn’t live with him 
after that. I paid him what I owed him the night before,” 
said Strong with a blush. “ I pawned everything to pay him, 
and then I went with my last ten florins, and had a shy at the 
roulette. If I had lost, I should have let him shoot me in the 
morning. I was weary of my life. By Jove, sir, isn’t it a 
shame that a man like me, who may have had a few bills out, 
but who never deserted a friend, or did any unfair action, 
shouldn’t be able to turn his hand to anything to get bread ? 
I made a good night, sir, at roulette , and I’ve done with that. 
I’m going into the wine business. My wife’s relations live at 


PEND ENNIS. 


771 

Cadiz. I intend to bring over Spanish wine and hams ; there’s 
a fortune to be made by it, sir, — a fortune — here’s my card. 
If you want any sherry or hams, recollect Ned Strong is your 
man.” And the Chevalier pulled out a handsome card, stating 
that Strong and Company, Shepherd’s Inn, were sole agents of 
the celebrated Diamond Manzanilla of the Duke of Garbanzos, 
Grandee of Spain of the First Class ; and of the famous To- 
boso hams, fed on acorns only in the country of Don Quixote. 
“ Come and taste ’em, sir, — come and try ’em at my Cham- 
bers. You see, I’ve an eye to business, and by Jove this time 
I’ll succeed.” 

Pen laughed as he took the card. “ I don’t know whether 
I shall be allowed to go to bachelors’ parties,” he said. “ You 
know I’m going to ” 

“ But you must have sherry.” You must have sherry.” 

I will have it from you, depend on it,” said the other. 
“ And I think you are very well out of your other partnership. 
That worthy Altamont and his daughter correspond, I hear,” 
Pen added after a pause. 

“Yes; she wrote him the longest*rigmarole letters, that I 
used to read ; the sly little devil ; and he answered under 
cover to Mrs. Bonner. He was for carrying her off the first 
day or two, and nothing would content him but having back 
his child. But she didn’t want to come, as you may fancy; 
and he was not very eager about it.” Here the Chevalier burst 
out in a laugh. “ Why, sir, do you know what was the cause 
of our quarrel and boxing-match ? There was a certain widow 
at Baden, a Madame la Baronne de la Cruche-cassee, who was 
not much better than himself, and whom the scoundrel wanted 
to marry ; and would, but that I told her he was married 
already. I don’t think that she was much better than he was. I 
saw her on the pier at Boulogne the day I came to England.” 

And now we have brought up our narrative to the point, 
whither the announcement in the “ Chatteris Champion ” had 
already conducted us. 

It wanted but very, very few days before that blissful one 
when Foker should call Blanche his own ; the Clavering folks 
had all pressed to see the most splendid new carriage in the 
whole world, which was standing in the coach-house at the 
“ Clavering Arms ; ” and shown, in grateful return for drink, 
commonly, by Mr. Foker’s head coachman. Madame Fribsby 
was occupied in making some lovely dresses for the tenants’ 
daughters, who were to figure as a sort of bridesmaids’ chorus 
at the breakfast and marriage ceremony. And immense festivi* 


PENDENNIS. 


77 2 

ties were to take place at the Park upon this delightful occa* 
sion. 

“ Yes, Mr. Huxter, yes ; a happy tenantry, its country’s 
pride, will assemble in the baronial hall, where the beards will 
wag all. The ox shall be slain, and the cup they’ll drain ; and 
the bells shall peal quite genteel ; and my father-in-law, with 
the tear of sensibility bedewing his eye, shall bless us at his 
baronial porch. That shall be the order of proceedings I think, 
Mr. Huxter ; and I hope we shall see you and your lovely bride 
by her husband’s side, and what will you please to drink sir ? 
Mrs. Lightfoot, madam, you will give to my excellent friend 
and body surgeon, Mr. Huxter, Mr. Samuel Huxter, M.R.C.S., 
every refreshment that your hostel affords, and place the festive 
amount to my account ; and Mr. Lightfoot, sir, what will you 
take ? though you’ve had enough already, I think ; yes, ha.” 

So spoke Harry Foker, in the bar of the “ Clavering Arms.” 
He had apartments at that hotel, and had gathered a circle of 
friends round him there. He treated all to drink who came. 
He was hail-fellow with every man. He was so happy ? He 
danced round Madame Aibsby, Mrs. Lightfoot’s great ally, as 
she sat pensive in the bar. He consoled Mrs. Lightfoot, who 
had already begun to have cause of matrimonial disquiet ; for 
the truth must be told, that young Lightfoot, having now the 
full command of the cellar, had none over his own unbridled 
desires, and was tippling and tipsy from morning till night. 
And a piteous sight it was for his fond wife to behold the big 
youth reeling about the yard and coffee-room, or drinking with 
the farmers and tradesmen his own neat wines and carefully- 
selected stock of spirits. 

When he could find time, Mr. Morgan the butler came from 
the Park, and took a glass at the expense of the landlord of the 
“ Clavering Arms.” He watched poor Lightfoot’s tipsy vaga- 
ries with savage sneers. Mrs. Lightfoot felt always doubly 
uncomfortable when her unhappy spouse was under hbs com- 
rade’s eye. But a few months married, and to think he had got 
to this ! Madame Fribsby could feel for her. Madam Fribsby 
could tell for her stories of men every bit as bad. She had had 
her own woes too, and her sad experience of men. So it is, 
that nobody seems happy altogether ; and that there’s bitters, 
as Mr. Foker remarked, in the cup of every man’s life. And 
yet there did not seem to be any in his, the honest young 
fellow ! Jt was brimming over with happiness and good-humor. 

Mr. Morgan was constant in his attentions to Foker. “ And 
yet I don’t like him somehow,” said the candid young man to 


PENDENNIS. 


773 


Mrs. Lightfoot. “ He always seems as if he was measuring 
me for my coffin somehow. Pa-in law’s afraid of him ; pa-in- 
law’s, a-hem ! nevermind, but ma-in-law’s a trump, Mrs. Light- 
foot.” 

“ Indeed my Lady was ; and Mrs. Lightfoot owned, with a 
sigh, that perhaps it had been better for her had she never left 
her mistress. 

“ No, I do not like thee, Dr. Fell; the reason why I cannot 
tell,” continued Mr. Foker ; “ and he wants to be taken as my 
head man. Blanche wants me to take him. Why does Miss 
Amory like him so ? ” 

“ Did Miss Blanche like him so ?” The notion seemed to 
disturb Mrs. Lightfoot very much ; and there came to this 
worthy landlady another cause for disturbance. A letter, 
bearing the Boulogne post-mark, was brought to her one morn- 
ing, and she and her husband were quarrelling over it as Foker 
passed down the stairs by the bar, on his way to the Park. 
His custom was to breakfast there, and bask awhile in the 
presence of Armida ; then, as the company of Clavering tired 
him exceedingly, and he did not cafe for sporting, he would 
return for an hour or two to billiards and the society of the 
“Clavering Arms;” then it would be time to ride with Miss 
Amory, and, after dining with her, he left her and returned 
modestly to his inn. 

Lightfoot and his wife were quarrelling over the letter. 
What was that letter from abroad ? Why was she always having 
letters from abroad ? Who wrote ’em ? — he would know. He 
didn’t believe it was her brother. It was no business of his ? 
It was a business of his ; and, with a curse, he seized hold of 
his wife, and dashed at her pocket for the letter. 

The poor woman gave a scream ; and said, “ Well, take it.” 
Just as her husband seized on the letter, and Mr. Foker entered 
at the door, she gave another scream at seeing him, and once 
more tried to seize the paper. Lightfoot opened it, shaking 
her away, and an enclosure dropped down on the breakfast- 
table. 

“ Hands off, man alive ! ” cried little Harry, springing in. 
“ Don’t lay hands on a woman, sir. The man that lays his 
hand upon a woman, save in the way of kindness, is a — hallo ! 
it’s a letter for Miss Amory. What’s this, Mrs. Lightfoot ? ” 

Mrs. Lightfoot began, in piteous tones of reproach to her 
husband, — “You unmanly fellow! to treat a woman so who 
took you off the street. Oh, you coward, to * lay your hand 
upon your wife ! Why did I marry you ? Why did I leave my 


774 


PENDENNIS. 


Lady for you ? Why did I spend eight hundred pound in 
fitting up this house that you might drink and guzzle ? ” 

“ She gets letters, and she won’t tell me who writes letters,” 
said Mr. Lightfoot, with a muzzy voice ; “ it’s a family affair, 
sir. Will you take anything, sir ? ” 

“ I will take this letter to Miss Amory, as I am going to the 
Park,” said Foker, turning very pale ; and taking it up from 
the table, which was arranged for the poor landlady’s breakfast, 
he went away. 

“ He’s cornin’ — dammy, who’s a comin ’ ? Who’s J. A., 
Mrs. Lightfoot — curse me, who’s J. A. ? ” cried the husband. 

Mrs. Lightfoot cried out, “ Be quiet, you tipsy brute, do ! ” 
— and running to her bonnet and shawl, threw them on, saw 
Mr. Foker walking down the street, took the by-lane which 
skirts it, and ran as quickly as she could to the lodge-gate, 
Clavering Park. Foker saw a running figure before him, but it 
was lost when he got to the lodge-gate. He stopped and asked, 
“ Who was that who had just come in ? Mrs. Bonner was it ? ” 
He reeled almost in his walk : the trees swam before him. He 
rested once or twice against the trunks of the naked limes. 

Lady Clavering was in the breakfast-room with her son, and 
her husband yawning over his paper. “ Good-morning, Harry,” 
said the Begum. “ Here’s letters, lots of letters ; Lady Rock- 
minster will be hereon Tuesday instead of Monday, and Arthur 
and the Major come to-day ; and Laura is to go to Dr. Port- 
man’s and come to Church from there: and — what’s the 
matter, my dear? What makes you so pale, Harry ? ” 

“ Where is Blanche ? ” asked Harry, in a sickening voice — 
“ not down yet ? ” 

“ Blanche is always the last,” said the boy, eating muffins ; 
“ she’s a regular dawdle, she is. When you’re not here, she 
lays in bed till lunch time.” 

“ Be quiet, Frank,” said the mother. 

Blanche came down presently, looking pale, and with 
rather an eager look towards Foker; then she advanced and 
kissed her mother, and had a face beaming with her very best 
smiles on when she greeted Harry. 

“ How do you do, sir ? ” she said, and put out both her 
hands. 

“ I’m ill,” answered Harry. “I — I’ve brought a letter for 
you, Blanche.” 

“A letter, and from whom is it, pray ? Voyons ,” she said. 

“ I don’t know — I should like to know,” said Foker. 

“ How can I tell until I see it ? ” asked Blanche. 


PENDENNIS. 


775 

“ Has Mrs. Bonner not told you ? ” he said, with a shaking 
voice ; — “ there’s some secret. You give her the letter, Lady 
Clavering.” 

Lady Claveririg, wondering, took the letter from poor 
Foker’s shaking hand, and looked at the superscription. As 
she looked at it, she too began to shake in every limb, and with 
a scared face she dropped the letter, and running up to Frank, 
clutched the boy to her, and-burst out with a sob — “ Take that 
away — it’s impossible, it’s impossible.” 

“ What is the matter ?i’ cried Blanche, with rather a ghastly 
smile ; “ the letter is only from — from a poor pensioner and 
relative of ours.” 

“ It’s not true, it’s not true,” screamed Lady Clavering. 
“ No, my Frank, — is it, Clavering ? ” 

Blanche had taken up the letter, and was moving with it 
towards the fire, but Foker ran to her and clutched her arm— 
“ I must see that letter,” he said; “give it me. You sha’n’t 
burn it.” 

“ You — you shall not treat Miss Amory so in my house,” 
cried the Baronet ; “give back the letter, by Jove ! ” 

“ Read it — and look at her,” Blanche cried, pointing to her 
mother ; “ it — it was for her I kept the secret ! Read it, cruel 
man ! ” 

And Foker opened and read the letter : — 


“ I have not wrote, my darling Bessy, this three weeks ; but this is to give her a father's 
blessing, and I shall come down pretty soon as quick as my note, and intend to see the cere- 
mony , and my son-in-law. I shall put up at Bonner’s. I have had a pleasant autumn, 
and am staying here at an hotel where there is good company, and which is kep’ in good 
style. I don’t know whether I quite approve of your throwing over Mr. P. for Mr. F., and 
don’t think Foker’s such a pretty name, and from your account of him he seems a muff , 
and not a beauty. But he has got the rowdy, which is the thing. So no more, my dear 
little Betsy, till we meet, from your affectionate father, 

“ J. Amory Altamont.” 

“ Read it, Lady Clavering ; it is too late to keep it from 
you now,” said poor Foker; and the distracted woman, having 
cast her eyes over it, again broke out into hysterical screams, 
and convulsively grasped her son. 

“ They have made an outcast of you, my boy,” she said. 
“ They’ve dishonored your old mother ; but I’m innocent, 
Frank ; before God, I’m innocent. I didn’t know this, Mr. 
Foker ; indeed, indeed I didn’t.” 

“ I’m sure you didn’t,” said Foker, going up and kissing her 
hand. 

“ Generous, generous Harry,” cried out Blanche, in an ec* 
stacy. But he withdrew his hand, which was upon her side, 


PENDENNIS. 


776 

and turned from her with a quivering lip. “ That’s differ- 
ent,” he says. 

“ It was for her sake — for her sake, Harry.” Again Miss 
Amory is in an attitude. 

“ There was something to be done for mine,” said Foker. 

“ I would have taken you, whatever you were. Everything’s 
talked about in London. I knew that your father had come 
to — to grief. You don’t think it was — it was for your connec- 
tion I married you ? D — it all ! I’ve loved you with all my 
heart and soul for two years, and you’ve been playing with me, 
and cheating me,” broke out the young man, with a cry. “ Oh, 
Blanche, Blanche, it’s a hard thing, a hard thing ! ” and he 
covered his face with liis hands, and sobbed behind them. 

Blanche thought, “ Why didn’t I tell him that night when 
Arthur warned me ? 

“ Don’t refuse her Harry,” cried out Lady Clavering. 
“Take her, take everything I have. It’s all hers, you know, 
at my death. This boy’s disinherited.” — (Master Frank, who 
had been looking as scared at the strange scene, here burst 
into a loud cry.) — “ Take every shilling. Give me just enough 
to live, and to go and hide my head with this child, and to fly 
from both. Oh, they’ve both been bad, bad men. Perhaps 
he’s here now. Don’t let me see him. Clavering, you coward, 
defend me from him.” 

Clavering started up at this proposal. “ You ain’t serious, 
Jemima ? You don’t mean that ? ” he said. “ You won’t throw 

me and Frank over? I didn’t know it, so help me . 

Foker, I’d no more idea of it than the dead — until the fellow 
came and found me out, the d — d escaped convict scoundrel.” 

“ The what? ” said Foker. Blanche gave a scream. 

“Yes,” screamed out the Baronet in his turn. “Yes, a 
d — d runaway convict — a fellow that forged his father-in-law’s 
name — a d — d attorney, and killed a fellow in Botany Bay, 
hang him — and ran into the Bush, curse him ; I wish he’d died 
there. And he came to me, a good six years ago, and robbed 
me ; and I’ve been ruining myself to keep him, the infernal 
scoundrel! And Pendennis knows it, and Strong knows it, 
and that d — d Morgan knows it, and she knows it, ever so 
long ; and I never would tell it, never : and I kept it from my 
wife.” 

“ And you saw him, and you didn’t kill him, Clavering, you 
coward ? ” said the wife of Amory. “ Come away, Frank ; 
your father’s a coward. I am dishonored, but I’m your old 
mother, and you’ll — you’ll love me, won’t you ? ” 


PEND ENNIS. 


777 

Blanche, eploree, went up to her mother ; but Lady Claver- 
ing shrank from her with a sort of terror. “ Don’t touch me,” 
she said ; “ you’ve no heart ; you never had. I see all now. 
I see why that coward was going to give up his place in Par- 
liament to Arthur ; yes, that coward ! and why you threatened 
that you would make me give you half Frank’s fortune. And 
when Arthur offered to marry you without a shilling, because 
he wouldn’t rob my boy, you left him, and you took poor Harry. 
Have, nothing to do with her, Harry. You’re good, you are. 

* Don’t marry that — that convict’s daughter. Come away, Frank, 
my darling ; come to your poor old mother. We’ll hide our- 
selves ; but we’re honest.” 

All this while a strange feeling of exultation had taken 
possession of Blanche’s mind. That month with poor Harry 
had been a weary month to her. All his fortune and splen- 
dor scarcely sufficed to make the idea of himself supportable. 
She was wearied of his simple ways, and sick of coaxing and 
cajoling him. 

“ Stay, mamma ; stay, madam ! ” she cried out with a ges- 
ture which was always appropriate, though rather theatrical ; 
“ I have no heart, have I ? I keep the secret of my mother’s 
shame. I give up my rights to my half-brother and my bastard 
brother — yes, my rights and my fortune. I don’t betray my 
father, and for this I have no heart ! I’ll have my rights now, 
and the laws of my country shall give them to me. I appeal to 
my country’s laws — yes, my country’s laws ! The persecuted 
one returns this day. I desire to go to my father.” And the 
little lady swept round her hand, and thought that she was a 
heroine. 

“You will, will you?” cried out Clavering, with one of his 
usual oaths. “ I’m a magistrate, and dammy, I’ll commit him. 
Here’s a chaise coming ; perhaps it’s him. Let him come.” 

A chaise was indeed coming up the avenue ; and the two 
women shrieked each their loudest, expecting at that moment 
to see Altamont arrive. 

The door opened, and Mr. Morgan announced Major Pen- 
dennis and Mr. Pendennis, who entered, and found all parties 
engaged in this fierce quarrel. A large screen fenced the 
breakfast-room from the hall ; and it is probable that, according 
to his custom, Mr. Morgan had taken advantage of the screen 
to make himself acquainted with all that occurred. 

It had been arranged on the previous day that the young 
people should ride ; and at the appointed hour in the afternoon, 
Mr. Foker’s horses arrived from the “ Clavering Arms.” But 


PENDENNIS. 


778 

Miss Blanche did not accompany him on this occasion. Pen 
came out and shook hands with him on the doorsteps ; and 
Harry Foker rode away, followed by his groom in mourning. 
The whole transactions which have occupied the most active 
part of our history were debated by the parties concerned dur- 
ing those two or three hours. Many counsels have been given, 
stories told, and compromises suggested ; and at the end, Harry 
Foker rode away, with a sad “God bless you!” from Pen. 
There was a dreary dinner at Clavering Park, at which the, lately 
installed butler did not attend ; and the ladies were both absent. 
After dinner, Pen said, “ I will walk down to Clavering and see 
if he is come.” And he walked through the dark avenue, across 
the bridge and road by his own cottage, — the once quiet and 
familiar fields of which were flaming with the kilns and forges 
of the artificers employed on the new railroad works ; and so 
he entered the town, and made for the “ Clavering Arms.” 

It was past midnight when he returned to Clavering Park. 
He was exceedingly pale and agitated. “ Is Lady Clavering 
up yet ? ” he asked. Yes, she was in her own sitting-room. He 
went up to her, and there found the poor lady in a piteous state 
of tears and agitation. 

“ It is I, — Arthur,” he said, looking in ; and entering, he 
took her hand very affectionately and kissed it. “You were 
always the kindest of friends to me, dear Lady Clavering,” he 
said. “ I love you very much. I have got some news for you.” 

“ Don't call me by that name,” she said, pressing his hand. 
“ You were always a good boy, Arthur ; and it’s kind of you to 
come now, — very kind. You sometimes look very like your ma, 
my dear.” 

“ Dear good Lady Clavering ,” Arthur repeated, with par- 
ticular emphasis, “ something very strange has happened.” 

“ Has anything happened to him ? ” gasped Lady Clavering. 
“ Oh, it’s horrid to think I should be glad of it — horrid ! ” 

“ He is well. He has been and is gone, my dear lady. 
Don’t alarm yourself, — he is gone, and you are Lady Clavering 
still.” 

“ Is it true, what he sometimes said to me,” she screamed 
out, — “ that he ? ” 

“ He was married before he married you,” said Pen. “ He 
has confessed it to-night. He will never come back.” There 
came another shriek from Lady Clavering, as she flung her 
arms round Pen, and kissed him, and burst into tears on his 
shoulder. 


PENDENNIS . 


779 

What Pen had to tell, through a multiplicity of sobs and 
interruptions, must be compressed briefly, for behold our pre- 
scribed limit is reached, and our tale is coming to its end. With 
the Branch Coach from the railroad, which had succeeded the 
old Alacrity and Perseverance, Amory arrived, and was set 
down at the “ Clavering Arms.” He ordered his dinner at the 
place under his assumed name of Altamont ; and, being of a 
jovial turn, he welcomed the landlord, who was nothing loth, to 
•a share of his wine. Having extracted from Mr. Lightfoot all 
the news regarding the family at the Park, and found, from 
examining his host, that Mrs. Lightfoot, as she said, had kept 
his counsel, he called for more wine of Mr. Lightfoot, and at 
the end of this symposium, both being greatly excited, went 
into Mrs. Lightfoot’s bar. 

She was there taking tea with her friend, Madame Fribsby ; 
and Lightfoot was by this time in such a happy state as not to 
be surprised at anything which might occur, so that, when Alta- 
mont shook hands with Mrs. Lightfoot as an old acquaintance, 
the recognition did not appear to him to be in the least strange, 
but only a reasonable cause for further drinking. The gentle- 
men partook then of brandy-and-water, which they offered to 
the ladies, not heeding the terrified looks of one or the other. 

Whilst they were so engaged, at about six o’clock in the 
evening, Mr. Morgan, Sir Francis Clavering’s new man, came 
in, and was requested to drink. He selected his favorite 
beverage, and the parties engaged in general conversation. 

After awhile Mr. Lightfoot began to doze. Mr. Morgan 
had repeatedly given hints to Mrs. Fribsby to quit the premises ; 
but that lady, strangely fascinated, and terrified it would seem, 
or persuaded by Mrs. Lightfoot not to go, kept her place. Her 
persistence occasioned much annoyance to Mr. Morgan, who 
vented his displeasure in such language as gave pain to Mrs. 
Lightfoot, and caused Mr. Altamont to say, that he was a rum 
customer, and not polite to the sex. 

The altercation between the two gentlemen became very 
painful to the women, especially to Mrs. Lightfoot, who did 
everything to soothe Mr. Morgan ; and, under pretence of 
giving a pipe-light to the stranger, she handed him a paper on 
which she had privily written the words, “He knows you. 
Go.” There may have been something suspicious in her man- 
ner of handing, or in her guest’s of reading, the paper : for 
when he got up a short time afterwards, and said he would go 
to bed, Morgan rose too, with a laugh, and said it was too early 
to go to bed. 


PENDENNIS. 


780 

The stranger then said he would go to his bedroom. Mor- 
gan said he would show him the way. 

At this the guest said, “ Come up. I’ve got a brace of 
pistols up there to blow out the brains of any traitor or skulk- 
ing spy,” and glared so fiercely upon Morgan, that the latter, 
seizing hold of Lightfoot by the collar, and waking him, said, 
“John Amory, I arrest you in the Queen’s name. Standby 
me, Lightfoot. This capture is worth a thousand pounds.” 

He put forward his hand as if to seize his prisoner, but the 
other, doubling his fist, gave Morgan with his left hand so 
fierce a blow on the chest, that it knocked him back behind 
Mr. Lightfoot. That gentleman, who was athletic and coura- 
geous, said he would knock his guest’s head off, and prepared 
to do so, as the stranger, tearing off his coat, and cursing both 
of his opponents, roared to them to come on. 

But with a piercing scream Mrs. Lightfoot flung herself be- 
fore her husband, whilst with another and louder shriek 
Madame Fribsby ran to the stranger, and calling out “ Arm- 
strong, Johnny Armstrong ! ” seized hold of his naked arm, 
on which a blue tattooing of a heart and M. F.. were visible. 

The ejaculation of Madame Fribsby seemed to astound and 
sober the stranger. He looked down upon her, and cried out, 
“ It’s Polly, by Jove.” 

“ Mrs. Fribsby continued to exclaim : “ This is not Amory. 
This is Johnny Armstrong, my wicked — wicked husband, mar- 
ried to me in St. Martin’s Church, mate on board an Indiaman, 
and he left me two months after, the wicked wretch. This is 
John Armstrong — here’s the mark on his arm which he made 
for me.” 

The stranger said, “I am John Armstrong, sure enough, 
Polly. I’m John Armstrong, Amory, Altamont, — and let ’em 
all come on, and try what they can do against a British sailor. 
Hurray, who’s for it ? ” 

Morgan still called out, “ Arrest him ! ” But Mrs. Light- 
foot said, “ Arrest him ! arrest you, you mean spy ! What ! 
stop the marriage and ruin my Lady, and take away the 
* Clavering Arms’ from us ? ” 

“ Did he say he’d take away the ‘ Clavering Arms’ from 
us ? ” asked Mr. Lightfoot, turning round. “ Hang him, I’ll 
throttle him ! ” 

“ Keep him, darling, till the coach passes to the up train. 
It’ll be here now directly.” 

“ D — him, I’ll choke him if he stirs,” said Lightfoot. And 
so they kept Morgan until the coach came, and Mr. Amory or 
Armstrong went away back to London. 


PENDENNIS. 


781 

Morgan had followed him : but of this event Arthur Pen- 
dennis did not inform Lady Clavering, and left her invoking 
blessings upon him at her son’s door, going to kiss him as he 
was asleep. It had been a busy day. 

We have to chronicle the events of but one day more, and 
that was a day when Mr. Arthur, attired in a new hat, a new 
blue frock-coat and blue handkerchief, in a new fancy waist- 
coat, new boots, and new shirt-studs (presented by the Right 
Honorable the Countess Dowager of Rockminster), made his 
appearance at a solitary breakfast-table, in Clavering Park, 
where he could scarce eat a single morsel of food. Two letters 
were laid by his worship’s plate ; and he chose to open the first, 
which was in a round clerk-like hand, in preference to the 
second more familiar superscription. 

Note 1 ran as follows : — 


“ Garbanzos Wine Company, Shepherd's Inn. — Monday . 

“ My dear Pendennis, — In congratulating you heartily upon the event which is to 
make you happy for life, I send my very kindest remembrances to Mrs. Pendennis, whom I 
hope to know even longer than I have already known her. And when I call her attention 
to the fact, that one of the most necessary articles to her husband’s comfort is pure sherry , 
1 know I shall have her for a customer for your worship’s sake. 

“ But I have to speak to you of other than my own concerns. Yesterday afternoon a 
certain J. A. arrived at my chambers from Clavenng, which he had left under circumstances 
of which you are doubtless now aware. In spite of our difference, I could not but give him 
food and shelter (and he partook freely both of the Garbanzos Amontillado and the Toboso 
ham), and he told me what had happened to him, and many other surprising adventures. 
The rascal married at sixteen, and has repeatedly since performed that ceremony — in Sydney, 
in New Zealand, in South America, in Newcastle, he says, first, before he knew our poor 
friend the milliner. He is a perfect Don Juan. 

“ And it seemed as if the commendatore had at last overtaken him, for, as we were at 
our meal, there came three heavy knocks at my outer door, which made our friend start. 
I have sustained a siege or two here, and went to -my usual place to reconnoitre. Thank my 
stars I have not a bill out in the world, and besides, those gentry do not come in that way. 
I found that it was your uncle’s late valet, Morgan, and a policeman (I think a sham police- 
man), and they said they had a warrant to take the person of John Armstrong, alias Amory, 
alias Altamont, a runaway convict, and threatened to break in the oak. 

“ Now, sir, in my own days of captivity I had discovered a little passage along the gutter 
into Bows and Costigan’s window, and I sent Jack Alias along this covered-way, not with- 
out terror of his life, for it had grown very cranky ; and then, after a parley, let in Mons. 
Morgan and friend. 

“ The rascal had been instructed about that covered-way, for he made for the room in- 
stantly, telling the policeman to go down stairs and keep the gate ; and he charged up my 
little staircase as if he had known the premises. As he was going out of the window we 
heard a voice that you know, from Bows’s garret, saying, ‘ Who are ye, and hwhat the div- 
vle are ye at? You’d betther leave the gutther ; bedad there’s a man killed himself 
already.’ 

“And as Morgan, crossing over and looking into the darkness, was trying to see whether 
this awful news was true, he took a broom-stick, and with a vigorous dash broke down the 
pipe of communication— and told me this morning, with great glee, that he was reminded 
of that ‘aisy sthratagem by remembering his dorling Emilie, when she acted the pawrt 
of Cora in the Plee — and by the bridge in Pezawro, bedad.’ I wish that scoundrel Mor- 
gan had been on the bridge when the General tried his sthratagem.’ 

“ If I hear more of Jack Alias, I will tell you. He has got plenty of money still, and I 
wanted him to send some to our poor friend the milliner ; but the scoundrel laughed and said, 
he had no more than he wanted, but offered to give anybody a lock of his hair. Farewell— 
be happy ! and believe me always truly yours, 


“ E. Strong.” 


PENDENNIS. 


782 

“ And now for the other letter,” said Pen. “ Dear old fel 
low ! ” and he kissed the seal before he broke it. 

“Warrington, Tuesday. 

“ I must not let the day pass over without saying a God bless you, to both of you. May 
Heaven make you happy, dear Arthur, and dear Laura. I think, Pen, that you have got 
the best wife in the world ; and pray that, as such, you will cherish her and tend her. The 
chambers will be lonely without you, dear Pen ; but if I am tired, I shall have a new home 
to go to in the house of my brother and sister. 1 am practising in the nursery here, in order 
to prepare for the part of Uncle George. Farewell! make your wedding tour, and come 
back to your affectionate “ G. W.” 

Pendennis and his wife read this letter together after Doc- 
tor Portman’s breakfast was over, and the guests were gone ; 
and when the carriage was waiting amidst the crowd at the 
Doctor’s outer gate. But the wicket led into the churchyard 
of St. Mary’s, where the bells were pealing with all their might, 
and it was here, over Helen’s green grass, that Arthur showed 
his wife George’s letter. For which of those two — for grief 
was it or for happiness, that Laura’s tears abundantly fell on 
the paper ? And once more, in the presence of the sacred dust, 
she kissed and blessed her Arthur. 

There was only one marriage on that day at Clavering 
Church : for in spite of Blanche’s sacrifices for her dearest 
mother, honest Harry Foker could not pardon the woman who 
had deceived her husband, and justly argued that she would 
deceive him again. He went to the Pyramids and Syria, and 
there left his malady behind him, and returned with a fine beard, 
and a supply of tarbooshes and nargillies, with which he re- 
gales all his friends. He lives splendidly, and, through Pen’s 
mediation, gets his wine from the celebrated vintages of the 
Duke of Garbanzos. 

As for poor Cos, his fate has been mentioned in an early 
part of this story. No very glorious end could be expected to 
such a career. Morgan is one of the most respectable men in 
the parish of St James’s, and in the present political movement 
has pronounced himself like a man and a Briton. And Bows, 
— on the demise of Mr. Piper, who played the organ at Claver- 
ing, little Mrs. Sam Huxter, who has the entire command of 
Doctor Portman, brought Bows down from London to contest 
the organ loft, and her candidate carried the chair. When Sir 
Francis Clavering quitted this worthless life, the same little in- 
defatigable canvasser took the borough by storm, and it is now 
represented by Arthur Pendennis, Esq. Blanche Amory, it is 
well known, married at Paris, and the saloons of Madame la 
Comtesse de Montmorenci de Yalentinois were amongst the 


PEND ENNIS. 


7 8 3 

most suivis of that capital. The duel between the Count and 
the young and fiery representative of the Mountain, Alcide de 
Mirobo, arose solely from the latter questioning at the Club the 
titles borne by the former nobleman. Madame de Montmorenci 
de Valentinois travelled after the adventure: and Bungay 
bought her poems, and published them, with the Countess’s 
coronet emblazoned on the Countess’s work. 

Major Pendennis became very serious in his last days, and 
was never so happy as when Laura was reading to him with her 
sweet voice, or listening to his stories. For this sweet lady is 
the friend of the young and the old : and her life is always 
passed in making other lives happy. 

“ And what sort of a husband would this Pendennis be ? ” 
many a reader will ask, doubting the happiness of such a mar- 
riage and the fortune of Laura. The querist, if they meet her, 
are referred to that lady herself, who, seeing his faults and way- 
ward moods — seeing and owning that there are men better than 
he — loves him always with the most constant affection. His 
children or their mother have never heard a harsh word from 
him ; and when his fits of moodiness and solitude are over, 
welcome him back with a never-failing regard and confidence. 
His friend is his friend still, — entirely heart-whole. That 
malady is never fatal to a , sound organ. And George goes 
through his part of Godpapa perfectly, and lives alone. If 
Mr. Pen’s works have procured him more reputation than has 
been acquired by his abler friend, whom no one knows, George 
lives contented without the fame. If the best men do not draw 
the great prizes in life, we know it has been so settled by the 
Ordainer of the lottery. We own, and see daily, how the false 
and worthless live and prosper, while the good are called away, 
and the dear and young perish untimely, — we perceive in every 
man’s life the maimed happiness, the frequent falling, the boot- 
less endeavor, the struggle of Right and Wrong, in which the 
strong often succumb and the swift fail : we see flowers of good 
blooming in foul places, as, in the x most lofty and splendid for- 
tunes, flaws of vice and meanness, and stains of evil ; and, 
knowing how mean the best of us is, let us give a hand of 
charity to Arthur Pendennis, with all his faults and shortcom- 
ings, who does not claim to be a hero, but only a man and a 
brother. 


THE END 


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